Month: December 2015

I was going to say something about Carrie Fisher’s flinty remarks in a Good Housekeeping article about how she was irked by a request by the Star Wars: The Force Awakens producers to lose 35 pounds. Fisher: “I did it the same way everybody has to — don’t eat and exercise more! There is no other way to do it. And when I do lose the weight, I don’t like that it makes me feel good about myself. It’s not who I am. My problem is they talk to me like an actress, but I hear them like a writer.” Being thinner is not who she is? Fisher doesn’t like that being thinner makes her feel good about herself? Before she dropped the weight Fisher was definitely on the chubby side. In her “Wishful Drinking” show a few years back she admitted she looked more or less like Elton John. Question to HE readership and in fact to Fisher herself: What producer in his/her right mind would say “hey, let’s go with a fat Princess Leia“?

Yesterday I posted a short piece about how Elmo Williams‘ cutting of the famous High Noon tick-tock sequence has always bothered me slightly. It was edited to match Dimitri Tiomkin‘s music, and so every cut was supposed to happen at the precise instant of the final beat…except it doesn’t quite do that. Today editor Matthew Morettini wrote to say the reason for my slight irritation is that the picture is four frames ahead of the music. But now Morettini has fixed it. “I’m a professional editor and had a few minutes on my hands today and re-synced the clip the way I always felt it should be,” he wrote. “And guess what? It’s better. Each and every picture edit was exactly four frames early.” Compare the Morettini version (top) to the Elmo Williams version (below). For the first time in 63 years, this famous montage has finally been cut right.

Matthew Morettini 2015 version:

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Elmo Williams 1952 version:

The package includes (a) Spotlight screener, (b) 139-page Spotlight screenplay, written by Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy, (c) high-quality, simulated-leather-bound reporter’s notebook, (d) Howard Shore‘s soundtrack score on CD and (I love this) cassette tape, and (e) a laminated reproduction of the original 1.6.02 Boston Globe story about the Boston Archdiocese‘s corrupt response to the misdeeds of John J. Goeghan, the first Boston priest to be investigated and reported on by the Spotlight team. (I hadn’t read until today that Goeghan was murdered in prison in 2004.)

After last night’s Hateful Eight screening I posted some virulent Twitter disputes after noticing that a few Tarantino fans (David Erlich, Kris Tapley, Mike Ryan, Erik Davis) were creaming all over it. Then I beat a hasty retreat in lieu of the 12.21 embargo. Sorry but my emotions got hold of me. I was all but spitting on my Oriental rug. Angie Han’s 12.2 Slashfilm piece about last night’s embargo breaking indicates that reactions were fairly orgasmic all around. They were within a certain perverse community, okay, but not “all around,” trust me.

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A Carol cabal almost totally dominated the New York Film Critics Circle today, resulting in wins for Best Picture, Best Director (Todd Haynes), Best Screenplay (Phyllis Nagy) and Best Cinematography (Ed Lachman). We all love Carol & sincere congratultations to these four, but boy, that Carol cabal!…they really strong-armed this normally eclectic, spread-the-wealth-around group into submission. I was expecting a Spotlight win but whatever. Obviously this ups Carol‘s stock among the Academy and guild members — a very welcome gift for the Weinstein Co.

Spotlight‘s Michael Keaton won for Best Actor — a welcome but somewhat confusing surprise given that Spotlight is totally an ensemble piece — there are no leads in that film & the NYFCC definitely knows that. Brooklyn‘s Saoirse Ronan won for Best Actress (brilliant, agreed). Kristen Stewart (Clouds of Sils Maria) won for Best Supporting Actress — a rich performance but the film (which doesn’t work at all) belongs to 2014 — I’m telling you straight out that the NYFCC is wrong to regard Stewart’s performance as better than Jane Fonda‘s in Youth or Elizabeth Banks‘ in Love & Mercy. Bridge of Spies‘ Mark Rylance won for Best Supporting Actor — fine.

Inside Out won for Best Animated Film (the NYFCC should have gone against the grain and given it to Anomalisa). Frederic Wiseman‘s In Jackson Heights won for Best Non-Fiction Film (really?). Timbuktu won for Best Foreign Film (a bit of a head-scratcher but fine). Laszlo Nemes‘ Son of Saul won for Best First Film.

With the exceptions of the Keaton, Rylance and Wiseman awards the NYFCC rule seems to have been that if a film/performance was seen or released after 9.1.15, it didn’t qualify. Carol was Cannes (May 2015), Brooklyn was last January (Sundance 2015), Clouds of Sils Maria was May 2014 (Cannes), Inside Out was last May (Cannes), Timbuktu was May 2014 (Cannes), Son of Saul was last May (Cannes).

Keaton is superb in Spotlight and all power to him and the proud and gifted Spotlight team (HE worships this film body and soul), but giving him a Best Actor trophy is category fraud, plain and simple. And that’s not a slam against Keaton at all. He simply doesn’t give a “lead” performance by any standard or criteria I’m familiar with.

Congrats to the makers of the 15 documentaries that have made the Academy’s shortlist — Amy, Best of Enemies, Cartel Land, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, He Named Me Malala, Heart of a Dog, The Hunting Ground, Listen to Me Marlon, The Look of Silence, Meru, 3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets, We Come as Friends, What Happened, Miss Simone?, Where to Invade Next and Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom. Due respect but it was seriously shortsighted for the Academy’s doc committee to dismiss Colin Hanks‘ All Things Must Pass, Ondi Timoner‘s Brand: A Second Coming, Doug Tirola‘s Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, Kent Jones‘ Hitchcock Truffaut and Amy Berg‘s Janis: Little Girl Blue. The winner of the Best Feature Doc Oscar will be announced during the 2.28.16 Oscarcast.

People in the loop are universally disagreeing with Matt Drudge’s report that Leonardo DiCaprio is raped by a bear in The Revenant. I wrote Drudge a little around 8:30 am this morning to alert him to the error, and then I posted a piece about this around 9:40 am. Everyone errs now and then. All Drudge had to do was check around and post a correction. But the headline is still up at 2 pm Pacific/5 pm Eastern. Wells to Drudge again: It’s a wrongo, man. Really — I’m not lying to you.

Okay, the unmasking is good (a bit like Jack Hawkins ripping Joan Collins‘ dress off in Land of the Pharoahs) but the four guys bowing down as Superman walks by is seriously ridiculous. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice doesn’t open for another four months but I’m already dedicated to hating it with a passion. Even the title is idiotic — how does a battle between these two superbozos amount to a dawn of anything, much less justice?

George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the most visually arresting, elegantly composed action films ever made and is easily among 2015’s finest, so I have no issue at all with the National Board of Review giving it their Best Film award. And giving Creed‘s Sylvester Stallone their Best Supporting Actor award (and thereby semi-officializing his award-season momentum) is fine by me. And I fully agree with Son of Saul getting their Best Foreign Language Film award. But The Martian‘s Matt Damon winning the Best Actor award instead of Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant? I’m glumly resigned to Room‘s Brie Larson winning several Best Actress awards so fine, whatever, and I haven’t seen The Hateful Eight (the first screening is tonight) so no comment on Jennifer Jason Leigh winning Best Supporting Actress and Quentin Tarantino winning for Best Screenplay. I just don’t like the NBR very much, and I really don’t like the fact that they ignored Spotlight, Joy, Carol, Brooklyn, The Big Short, The Revenant…seriously, why did they go for so many popcorn movies?

The NBR used to be made up of a bunch of crusty old-school Manhattanites — old biddies, jaded alcoholics, etc. Now, to judge by today’s vote, it seems to be ruled by 45-and-under action/genre/sci-fi geeks.

We all know that winning a Best Actor Oscar is not so much about the quality of a performance (although that obviously counts) as a compelling narrative that Academy voters want to cheer or express a kinship with. Two years ago Matthew McConaughey‘s narrative (actor saves career from romcom suffocation by switching to quality-level roles) won over Leonardo DiCaprio‘s (gifted, much-nominated actor delivers bravura, ironically over-the-top performance and scores big-time with legendary quaalude scene). This year DiCaprio, back in the game with his all-in Revenant performance, has a new compelling narrative — he suffered, he froze, he ate animal organs, he gutted a dead horse and crawled inside the carcass, he brilliantly simulated being attacked by a bear, etc.

But the suffering thing needs to be coupled with a supplementary narrative, which is that the Wolf quaalude scene is too good, too classic and too hilarious to have been deemed insufficient for a win. Amends need to be made. This is why Leo must and shall win over Black Mass‘s Johnny Depp. Depp, no question, gives a fascinating performance as a stone-cold sociopath but what’s the narrative? I’ll tell you what the narrative is. Depp was super-rich from the Pirate movies but he needed to expand his repertoire so he manned up and found his groove by wearing a heavily hair-sprayed Whitey Bulger wig and Alaskan-husky contact lenses.

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