Day: October 11, 2014

Noah director Darren Aronofsky and I kicked it around for 20 minutes today. The idea was to inject Noah (which has made Paramount happy by earning $360 million worldwide) into the award-season conversation, and that shouldn’t be too hard as far as…oh, Jennifer Connelly‘s supporting performance, Matty Libatique‘s cinematography, Mark Friedberg‘s production design, and Patti Smith‘s song (“Mercy”) are concerned. It’s a measure of my high regard for Aronofsky that I don’t have a problem with his tennis-ball haircut. He’s been through that “feeling of emptiness” that Kirk Douglas spoke about in The Bad and the Beautiful and is now onto the next thing, which of course he won’t talk about. Me: “Are you going to downshift into…what, some little black-and-white film?” Aronofsky: “I’ve already done that.”

Noah director Darren Aronofsky — Saturday, 10.11, 12:05 pm at Le Petit Ermitage.

Our loose-shoe discussion happened on the roof of Le Petit Ermitage, a smallish boutique hotel on Cynthia Street in West Hollywood. Fresh fruit, blueberry muffins, good coffee…oh, and bikini-clad women by the pool. And a general aura of Roman splendor. Again, the mp3.

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When did it begin to sink in that Brendan Gleeson wasn’t just a bearish, flourishy Irish fellow who would always supply a little something extra but a grander lead-actor sort with a fine blend of sadness, compassion and mirth? One of those guys who doesn’t “act” as much as command the room without apparent effort. His voice settles in like a warm whiskey on a chilly autumn day. I’ve been enjoying Gleeson since the early ’90s but the uptick began with his BAFTA- and Golden Globe-nominated performance in ’08’s In Bruges. Most people will tell you Gleeson’s biggest score so far was playing the charmingly corrupt Sergeant Gerry Boyle in John Michael McDonagh‘s The Guard (’11). But then came Calvary, a new McDonagh-Gleeson collaboration that premiered at Sundance ’14. Gleeson won some of the best reviews of his career as a burly Irish priest whose life has been threatened by a man who was victimized by a Catholic priest as a child. The film struck me as being about several social ills affecting Ireland but no one’s obliged to agree, much less listen.

Brendan Gleeson — Thursday, 10.9, 11:55 am.

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There’s a bitchy N.Y. Times critic in Birdman named Tabitha who’s very well played by Lindsay Duncan. During today’s New York Film Festival press conference costar Edward Norton noted (according to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Ashley Lee) that the real-life Tabitha is “Manohla,” referring to Times film critic Manohla Dargis. Costar Zach Galifianakis said he’s “never had a bad review so I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about…it sounds familiar, but I’ve heard people talk about it.”

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Laura Poitras‘s Citizenfour (Radius/TWC, 10.24), the step-by-step story of how Poitras and hotshot journalist Glenn Greenwald broke the story of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, is a gripping, dead brilliant cyber-thriller. It’s a documentary, of course, but I’ve never seen a doc that feels less like one. This is realtime drama, suspenseful as a motherfucker, and with the tonal vibe of a low-key espionage thriller. In short it’s great cinema — riveting, moody, disturbing. And cut and paced like…what, a 21st Century Ipcress File? Something like that.

The surprise is that it’s emotionally engaging. That’s because the affable, quite eloquent Snowden comes across as a good guy with fears and regular-guy emotions and a pair of steel balls — a personable, highly intelligent fellow in a tough spot but with firm convictions and no regrets whatsoever (or none to speak of). He’s not in a serene situation but he’s clearly at peace with himself, and undeterred.

I was so taken by Citizenfour, which I saw last night at the Aidikoff screening room in Beverly Hills (two or three hours after it played at the New York Film Festival), that I’m seeing it again on Monday. I’ve seen certain docs more than once, but I’ve never decided to re-experience a documentary within a week of an initial viewing in my entire life.

My condolences to Life Itself, The Battered Bastards of Baseball, Red Army, Code Black, Last Days in Vietnam, Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, Jodorowsky’s Dune, My Life Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn and 20,000 Days On Earth but Citizenfour is almost certainly going to take the Best Feature Documentary Oscar — hands down, game over, forget about it.

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