Month: February 2016

Sasha Stone and I did our Oscar Poker chat today as I was driving back from Santa Barbara. Topic A, of course, was the five BAFTA wins by The Revenant, including Best Picture, Best Director (Alejandro G. Inarritu) and Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio). Which seems to pretty much wrap things up Oscar-wise, certainly in the wake of Inarritu’s DGA win last weekend and tonight’s ASC win by Emmanuel Lubezski.  The only way The Revenant doesn’t win the Best Picture Oscar is if Academy voters, who’ve only been voting since last Friday and have until 2.23 to finish up, decide to revolt en masse. Again, the mp3.

From Andrew Barker’s 9.13.15 Variety review: “In a cinematic landscape awash with hairsplittingly literal musical biopics, it comes as a pleasant surprise to discover that Robert Budreau’s Chet Baker film, Born to Be Blue (IFC Films, 3.25), is not a Chet Baker biopic at all.

“It is, instead, a film about a character who happens to share a name and a significant number of biographical similarities with Chet Baker, taking the legendary West Coast jazz musician’s life as though it were merely a chord chart from which to launch an improvised set of new melodies.

“Upending the conventions of the musical rise-and-fall formula while still offering a relatively straightforward three-act narrative, the film is anchored by an Ethan Hawke performance that ranks among the best of his career. It’s hard to say how much of a draw it will be commercially: Jazz purists will likely be confused, and viewers expecting anything resembling a primer on Baker’s music will be frustrated. But Budreau isn’t out to make a live-action dramatization of Baker’s Wikipedia page here; he’s trying to make a real film.”

I don’t like mingling with hotel guests or staff. If I run into one I’ll turn on the pleasant smile and say “good morning!” but if I can avoid them I will. Partly because I prefer morning solitude, and partly because the folks who stay at the Fess Parker Doubletree (I had to leave the Santa Barbara Holiday Inn two days ago) tend to be the same kind of people who go on Caribbean cruises and vacation in Cancun and Las Vegas. Middle-aged marrieds, overweight types, elderly folk, tourists with kids…later.

All to say that when I want a cup of Starbucks Instant I’d rather fill the cup with hot water from the bathroom tap than hit the breakfast lounge. It’s not the staff (they’re all gracious and obliging) as much as the riff-raff.

In any event I was up early this morning and not, for a reason I won’t go into, at the Fess Parker but at the Cabrillo Inn. Around 6:45 am I turned on the bathroom tap and waited for the hot water. And waited. It didn’t happen, never even turned warm. So I went downstairs with my day-old paper cup and my Starbucks Instant and strolled into the complimentary-breakfast room. Some 50ish guy (a tourist from Chicago, he later explained) was standing inside and giving me the once-over.

Two women were preparing things; they weren’t quite ready to serve. But all I wanted was some hot water so I asked if I could get some. In a minute or two, they said. So I nodded and waited. It wasn’t worth explaining that tap water would suffice.

The guy from Chicago thought I had overstepped. Chicago guy: “Why don’t you ask the hotel manager?” Me: “What’s he gonna do?” Chicago guy: “That’s what he’s here for.” Me: “What’s he gonna do, push the emergency hot-water button?” Chicago guy: “He could get an engineer to fix the pipes.” Me: “At ten minutes to seven on a Sunday morning? Yeah, that’s a possibility.”

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Apologies for not posting sooner about Friday night’s Santa Barbara Film Festival appearance by Carol costar Rooney Mara. She sat for a moderately engaging interview with Entertainment Weekly‘s Joe McGovern, who asked some gently perceptive and knowledgable questions, and accepted the Cinema Vanguard award for her Oscar-nominated Best Supporting Actress performance in Todd Hayne‘s Carol. A taped tribute by Mara’s costar Cate Blanchett was shown at the finale, and then Haynes himself presented the award.

Rooney Mara prior to Friday night’s Santa Barbara Film Festival tribute. (Photo shamelessly stolen from the Daily Mail.)

Carol director Todd Haynes, Rooney Mara, Santa Barbara Film festival director Roger Durling.

Mara handled the ordeal as best she could. Yes, it’s fair to use that word. Mara was a good sport. She made every effort to be gracious and responsive, and she definitely smiled from time to time. But you could sense that she regarded the tribute as a kind of gauntlet or courtoom grilling — as a rite of oppression that she had to do. Maybe all actors and filmmakers feel this way, but they hide it better or…you know, they’re not struggling with it as much.

Mara has never been one for jazzy, free-form interviews — her natural inclination is to be chaste if not solemn, and to refrain from comment unless she really has something to say. She’s certainly never submitted to the glib-ironic, casually brain-farty, red-carpet aspects of celebrityhood.

Can I be honest? Mara is not loved by some who have interviewed her previously. She’s regarded as bit of a stiff — smile-less, humorless, wrapped too tight. But that’s okay. Greta Garbo wore this hairshirt this back in the ’30s (“I vant to be alone”) and it didn’t hurt her career or lessen her allure.

Okay, yes, I noticed a few walk-outs during the Mara tribute. (I was out in the lobby for a short period.) I was chatting with a 40ish couple around 9:05 pm, and asked at one point why they were leaving. They said “Uhm, well, you know…it’s almost over.” Translation: They wanted it to be over.

Mara is who she is, and that’s okay. She doesn’t like smiling like an idiot all that much, and I don’t like doing that either…fine. She likes to wear her hair in a tight regal bun, and that aesthetic speaks for itself.

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Rick Famuyiwa‘s Confirmation (HBO, 4.16) stars Kerry Washington as Anita Hill, and The Wire‘s Wendell Pierce as Clarence Thomas. Greg Kinnear as Sen. Joe Biden, Treat Williams as Sen. Ted Kennedy, Dylan Baker as Sen. Orrin Hatch plus Jennifer Hudson, Jeffrey Wright, Eric Stonestreet, Bill Irwin, Kimberly Elise, Grace Gummer, Erika Christensen. Screenplay by Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich)

The annual Santa Barbara Film Festival’s Women’s Panel (i.e., Creative Forces: Women in the Business) came off smoothly and without a hitch today. Moderator Madelyn Hammond kept the ball in the air with the help of panelists Susan Cartsonis (producer, Storefront Pictures), Svetlana Cvetko (cinematogrqpher — The Architect, Inside Job, Red Army), Alison Eastwood (director, Battlecreek), Liz Garbus (director — What Happened, Miss Simone?), Shannon McIntosh (producer, The Hateful Eight) and Rosa Tran (producer, Anomalisa). Best line: Cvetko’s stating that her core belief — “Be yourself” — was passed along during an impressionable moment by a very wise cab driver.

(l. to r.) producer Shannon McIntosh, director Allison Eastwood, director Liz Garbus, dp Svetlana Cvetko, producer Susan Cartsonis, producer Rosa Tran.

(l. to r.) Madelyn Hammond, Cvetko, Cartsonis, Tran.

Conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is dead at age 79, probably of a heart attack. Glory hallelujah! A toxic right-winger, an enemy of Roe vs. Wade and Obamacare, a supporter of Citizens United, a chronic enemy of gay marriage and affirmative action, voted with Bush on Bush vs. Gore…urinate on his grave.

Online and Twitter reactions have been in the realm of great comfort and joy. President Obama will of course nominate on of his own, and the Supreme Court will be a less conservative body at the end of the day. Rabid Congressional righties will probably try to stall any confirmation hearings until after the inauguration of President Trump.

A spokesperson said that Scalia, in Texas for a hunting trip, went to bed Friday night, told friends he wasn’t feeling well. He didn’t rise for breakfast the following morning, and the group he was with left without him. Someone eventually went in to check on the guy and found him unresponsive. Sometimes there’s God, so quickly!

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For whatever reason I decided to watch John Sturges‘ Marooned (’69) yesterday afternoon on Turner Classic Movies. I was in my hotel room and fiddling around and suddenly there it was, and since I’d never actually watched it start to finish I figured “why not?…in 2013 Alfonso Cuaron told Wired magazine that he watched over and over as a kid.” Maybe so but Marooned is an embarassment — comically inauthentic, a stiff. Compared to the verisimilitude of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Apollo 13 and Gravity it’s like an Ed Wood film. How could Sturges, a tough pro who knew from quality, have made something this mediocre? Poor Gregory Peck, poor David Janseen, poor James Franciscus, poor Richard Crenna, poor Gene Hackman, poor Nancy Kovack, poor Lee Grant, poor Mariette Hartley, etc. They all behave as if they’d just been told they have cancer. From Wiki page: The 1970 Mad magazine satire of Marooned, called Moroned, described story events in actual film time. NASA officials are pressed to launch the X-RT — ‘the Experimental Rescue Thing’ — in ‘about an hour…maybe…an hour and a half, tops”. One astronaut sacrifices his life to escape the film critics.”

Scott Feinberg did it right in Santa Barbara last night. The Hollywood Reporter columnist kept last night’s group interview with the five Oscar nominees for Best Director — Room‘s Lenny Abrahamson, The Revenant‘s Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Spotlight‘s Tom McCarthy, The Big Short‘s Adam McKay and Mad Max: Fury Road‘s George Miller — to a tolerable two hours, and it just seemed to zip along. And it was funny at times. And I got into the after-party (thanks to Sunshine Sachs’ Brooke Blumberg) and had some chummy words with Inarritu, etc. A good night, zero frustrations, bons amis.

Oscar-nominated directors on the Arlington theatre stage (l. to. r.): Room‘s Lenny Abrahamson, The Revenant‘s Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Spotlight‘s Tom McCarthy, Mad Max: Fury Road‘s George Miller and The Big Short‘s Adam McKay.

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Pete Hammond suspects that Adam McKay‘s The Big Short will win the Best Picture Oscar. He believes that if The Big Short wins the top BAFTA award on Sunday night, “It’s over.” But you know something? During the film-clip reel at the start of last night’s Directors Tribute at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, The Revenant got the biggest applause. It was only a gathering of well-to-do Santa Barbara film fanatics, yes, but you could feel it — The Revenant has the most passionate following. I’m a devoted Spotlight fan, but my insect antennae is telling me that The Revenant will take the big prize on 2.28. It has the most Oscar nominations, Alejandro G. Inarritu won the DGA award, Leonardo DiCaprio is locked for Best Actor, it won the Golden Globe award for Best Picture, Drama, etc. Oscar voting began today — Friday, 2.12.16 — at 8 am Pacific. Voting closes on Tuesday, 2.23.16 at 5 pm Pacific.