Okay, now I’m psyched. Notice how Miles Teller is apparently playing it real, or at least isn’t overtly winking or hinting that you’re watching a comedy and are therefore expected to laugh? I have a feeling it’s going to be his movie more than Jonah Hill‘s, and I’m saying this as a major Hill homie.
Posted on 3.24.16: I love the term “American biographical criminal comedy.” Todd Phillips‘ film is about the real-life saga of arms dealers Efraim_Diveroli (Jonah Hill) and David Packouz (Miles Teller) who ran afoul of the law five or six years ago for selling crap-level arms to the Afghan army.
There will be a little more time for Academy members to fill in their nomination ballots next January. Balloting will begin on the morning of Thursday, 1.5.17 or six days later than last year’s 12.30 balloting kickoff. It will conclude at 5 pm on 1.13.17, or nine days later. Last year the nommie balloting period lasted 10 days (12.30.15 to 1.8.16). The slackers (i.e., those who routinely refuse to attend screenings or watch screeners until the very last minute) will be able to begin the process a little later, but they’ll have a day less to sort things through. Some guy tweeted today that “you’d be amazed how many members don’t watch all the movies because they’re away for Xmas and New Year’s.” I’m not amazed in the least. The default attitude on the part of many older Academy members is one of extreme laziness. The Oscar nominations will be announced on Tuesday, 1.24. The PGA and DGA awards will happen on 2.4 and 2.6, respectively. Final voting will open on Monday, 2.13 and finish on Tuesday, 2.21. The Oscar telecast will happen on Sunday, 2.26.
I caught Meera Menon‘s Equity at last January’s Sundance Film Festival, and while I liked or respected most of it, I decided in the end that it was just pretty good. And when I sat down to write about it, nothing happened. I was “with it” and attuned and waiting for the power-punches to land, but they were never thrown. The behavior gets darker and nastier as things move along, but the film pretty much stays on the same level start to finish. Which isn’t a “bad” thing — it’s a totally decent film — but I felt a wee bit underwhelmed.
Promoted as “the first female-driven Wall Street movie,” Equity basically says that financial sector women are just as predatory, conniving and deceitful as the guys in Wall Street or The Wolf of Wall Street. The main problem is that it starts out with someone you’re thinking might be the audience’s friend (Anna Gunn‘s Naomi Bishop) — a rooted, charismatic lead to stand by and root for — but then shit happens and the floorboards don’t hold and [SPOILER!] Naomi gets more or less elbowed aside. We’re left at the end without a friend or a hero or anything, really.
It’s basically a chilly film about people you don’t like or identify with, and everyone fucking their marks or rivals any way they can.
Floundering in the editing room since 2011 or thereabouts, Terrence Malick‘s Voyage of Time was first envisioned in the late ’70s as a project called Q, a naturalist epic about the beginnings of life on earth. Portions of it turned up in The Tree Of Life, but now (after a July 2013 lawsuit filed by Seven Seas, claiming that nearly $6 million in production funds had been more or less pissed away on nothing) Voyage has finally been completed and will open as two films — a 40-minute IMAX version narrated by Brad Pitt, and a 35mm feature-length version narrated by Cate Blanchett.
No offense but I’ll take the Pitt and shine the Blanchett.
The Voyage kin will open on 10.7.16 but really, nobody cares. Nobody except critics and the cloistered film-society monks who’ve taken it upon themselves to guard the Malick flame. VFX by Dan Glass and Douglas Trumbull, music by Ennio Morricone…flatline. If Voyage had popped 15 or 20 years ago it might have seemed like something, but it’s arriving in the midst of The Great Malick Rejection and is therefore a wildebeest calf facing wild dogs.
Nobody will give a damn about Weightless either. Critics will see it, of course, and take it for a spin around the dance floor but not a bird will stir in the trees. Unless, of course, Malick has reinvented himself with Weightless but what are the odds of that? Barring a miracle the man is over. The current incarnation, I mean. He could always go out to the desert and meditate for six months and return a changed man. Anything is possible. I’m sorry but he did this to himself.
Yes, this episode happened two years and two weeks ago. Yes, it’s apropos of nothing. Yes, I’m experiencing a dull day. But mentioning Neeson (a valid thing given his experience dealing with forest predators) at least affords an opportunity to post a 14-month-old Kevin Pollak bit, after the jump.
Albert Brooks: I know you like and respect him. I’ve never seen you like this about anyone, so please don’t get me wrong when I tell you that Justin Lin, while being a very nice guy, is the Devil. J.J. Abrams: This isn’t friendship. You’re crazy, you know that? Brooks: What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he’s around? Abrams: God! Brooks: Come on! Nobody is going to be taken in by a guy with a long, red, pointy tail! What’s he gonna sound like? Acchh-acchh-acchh! I’m semi-serious here.
Abrams: You’re seriously… Brooks: He’ll be attractive! He’ll launch his career with a fascinating Sundance film called Better Luck Tomorrow. He’ll direct a shitload of Fast and Furious movies that will make many millions for all concerned. He’ll never do an evil thing! He’ll never deliberately hurt a living thing…he’ll just bit by little bit turn the art of cinema into a more synthetic, less recognizably human, more audaciously cartoonish form of megaplex wankery, and the empty Coke bottles will love him for it. Just a tiny little bit. Just coax along, flash over substance. Just a tiny little bit. And he’ll constantly talk about the need to out-perform the last bullshit swizzle-stick, quarter-of-an-inch-deep CG event movie, and about the next level of razzle-dazzle CG porn we’ll need to put into the next one. And he’ll get all the great women.
