Day: December 15, 2014

Marshall Fine on Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, posted on 12.15: “It’s as if filmmaker and novelist [Thomas Pynchon] alike are commenting upon the art form by denigrating it, poking mirthless fun. Even as Anderson trots out notable actors playing what could be memorable characters — Reese Witherspoon, Benicio del Toro, a wildly lascivious and knowing Martin Short and a hammer-headed Josh Brolin — he strands them on little islands of his own whimsy.

And if that’s not enough: “I was an early fan of Anderson but over his past three films he seems to be playing a game of chicken with the audience: Bet I can make you watch without actually revealing anything about what you’re watching. How long will you remain engaged with a work that seems to purposely challenge the viewer to understand what the filmmaker’s getting at?”

Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups appears to be some kind of riff on La Dolce Vita or 8 1/2 or something along those lines. The Christian Bale character is some kind of louche Hollywood guy with too much dough, too many choices, too many women, not a lot of discipline…adrift in corruption, plagued by misgivings. Or something like that. Do the characters (Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman) talk to each other in it? Using words, I mean? Or will they mainly talk to themselves a la Tree of Life and To The Wonder? Is there any kind of (excuse this inexcusably vulgar term) story or is this just another impressionist Malicky meandering? I’m slightly intrigued but until it’s been proven to me that Cups is composed of actual scenes in which (a) characters have goals and demons and interact with each other and (b) a semblance of a story happens due to things actually happening, I’m not paying $2500 to see this puppy at the Berlinale. No way. And don’t call me a Philistine for not wanting to muddle my way through another To The Wonder again. Stories and characters used to manifest in Malickland…really. Doubters need to check out Badlands and Days of Heaven.

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George Stephanopoulos: “Are there any second thoughts, at all?” Seth Rogen: “At this point it’s too late to have any.” Why didn’t Stephanopoulos ask Rogen if he and Evan Goldberg would pitch and make the exact same movie if they could do it all over again? Or if he felt The Interview would have been diminished if a fictitious Asian dictator has been substituted? Or if he agreed with Aaron Sorkin‘s N.Y. Times anti-press screed?

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The more a lead character is brutally beaten and the more he suffers, the nobler and purer of heart and closer to God he is, and the more deserving of worship. This was basically the idea or strategy behind Mel Gibson‘s The Passion of the Christ, which obviously paid off with conservative hinterland Christians. This idea has now been more or less appropriated by Angelina Jolie, which surprised me. All along I thought Angie was just another fair-minded humanist liberal but there’s obviously a strain of conservative sentiment within. How it got there or why is a mystery, but it’s somewhere in her psyche.

Is it worth it to fly to the Berlinale in February and stay at some Airb&b pad for four or five days and shell out at least $2500 so I can be among the first to see and review Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups? I think not. You never know with Malick these days. Will Knight contain dialogue or will the actors just whisper and roam around? Will it have a story of any kind? Will it make any sense? The fact that it’s been in the editing room for a couple of years suggests that Malick has been tossing the lettuce leaves pretty high in the air. I’ll wait until it plays at Cannes Film Festival, thanks. I attended the Berlinale last year when the big attraction was the debut of Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel, but that was a Fox Searchlight deal (air fare, hotel for three days). It just seems a bit much to fund a big Berlin thing all on my lonesome. On top of which I didn’t care that much for my Berlinale experience, to be honest.

Christian Bale, Natalie Portman during filming of Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups in 2012.

A lot of people and a lot of movies have been nominated by the Broadcast Film Critics Association, a.k.a., the givers of the People’s Choice Awards.** These guys know how to spread the love around. Birdman leads the pack with 13 nominations followed by The Grand Budapest Hotel (11 noms) and Boyhood (8 noms). Reminder with special attention to Hollywood Reporter awards handicapper Scott Feinberg — the film with the most nominations among all the award groups tends to generally kick ass and win the Best Picture Oscar…do the math.

Dan Gilroy‘s Nightcrawler‘s Jake Gyllenhaal was nominated for Best Actor and the film was nominated for Best Picture…go Gilroy brothers! Ava DuVernay‘s Selma was nominated five times including Best Picture and Best Director. Chris Nolan‘s Interstellar collected four nominations but not for Best Picture or Best Director. The BFCA’s largesse was further indicated by the giving of four nominations to Unbroken, which has been shut out by the critics groups and blanked by the SAG and Golden Globe nominations. But the BFCAs gave it nominations for Best Picture, Best Director (Angelina Jolie), Best Cinematogrpahy (Roger Deakins) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Coen brothers, William Nicholson, Richard LaGravanese).

Kevin Costner, Jessica Chastain and Ron Howard will receive special awards at the BFCA awards ceremony, which will happen on Thursday, January 15th.

** The BFCA nominations were revealed out last night but embargoed until Monday morning.

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“There’s no black or white, left or right to me any more…there’s only up or down.” — Bob Dylan as quoted by Martin Scorsese in No Direction Home: Bob Dylan.

When I first saw Mike Binder‘s Black or White last summer I knew that Kevin Costner‘s performance as Elliot, an angry, grieving attorney who’s drinking too much, was one of his all-time best. Not just a well-measured performance of skill and feeling but one that was “up” in a Dylanesque sense. Which is to say a kind of head-turner, which is to say a kind of high. Because it was basically about the old Jimmy Cagney thing of “planting your feet, looking the other guy in the eye and telling the truth,” which meant no crapping around with those little charm-school games that actors sometimes resort to. And it wasn’t one of Stanley Kubrick‘s “interesting” performances either. It was take-it-or-leave-it real which, in my mind, is always an “up” thing because the technique is more or less invisible.

Costner, I felt, had gotten under the skin of this somewhat testy grandfather of a mixed-race girl and made him whole, but he had also shown courage in playing Elliot in the first place. Because he and Binder pretty much did it alone.

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