Day: December 3, 2017

Guy Lodge, Timothy Chalamet, Dunkirk

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The headline sounds a tad cynical but I mean it. Variety‘s Guy Lodge is right on top of what’s happening right now, and hats off for his being first. Because Dunkirk, a long-presumed Best Picture nominee, suddenly seems to be faltering and wobbly-kneed, and the great-guns assumption that Gary Oldman‘s broadly actorish performance as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour is locked to win is suddenly in question. It may be, in fact, that Oldman isn’t the front-runner any more, and that Call Me By Your Name‘s Timothy Chalamet might be elbowing him aside. Maybe.

That, at least, is what Lodge seems to be suggesting and what HE’s insect-antennae are conveying as we speak.

Today was the day I realized that Dunkirk, which almost everyone has had at the top of their Best Picture roster since last July, isn’t happening any more. The complaint about Dunkirk lacking a traditional arc and not delivering anything in the way of affecting mainstream emotion has always been out there, but now the critics aren’t standing up for it either. It may eventually be Best Picture-nominated (it seems inconceivable, still, that the Academy would brush it aside in this respect) but winning is out of the question. That much is certain, and what a shock to confront this.

Because in the back of my mind I’ve always been saying, “How can a film like Dunkirk, a film that delivers such amazing scope and intensity and you-are-there realism, and which swan-dives so grandly and decisively into a groundbreaking, time-flipping narrative approach…voters will have to come back to it in the end. It’s too powerful, too overwhelming to be dismissed.” Now I’m starting to realize that the Dunkirk current isn’t there, and that perhaps it never was.

It also hit me today that Chalamet is arguably more of a Best Actor frontrunner than Oldman, at least among the somewhat younger and more progressive, alive-in-the-present-tense crowd. The older, better-safe-than-sorry contingent has been hearing “Oldman, Oldman, Oldman” for several weeks now, but Chalamet has won Best Actor trophies with the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and that really means something. At the very least the Best Actor situation is now a horse race.

Lodge appears to believe that Chalamet is to the 2017 Best Actor race what Isabelle Huppert was to the 2016 Best Actress race — the most frequently awarded contender before Emma Stone came along and took the Best Actress Oscar. Maybe so, but at least things are suddenly more interesting.

Lodge responds: “Not saying that at all — just that the faction most inclined to vote for Oldman, as with Emma Stone last year, hasn’t chimed in yet.”

Glory Day For Call Me By Your Name

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Luca Guadagnino‘s Call My By Your Name was the big winner in today’s Los Angeles Film Critics Association awards, taking the Best Picture trophy, splitting the Best Director trophy between Guadagnino and The Shape of Water‘s Guillermo del Toro, and with Timothee Chalamet taking the Best Actor prize. On top of which The Florida Project‘s Willem Dafoe won LAFCA’s Best Supporting Actor prize, and Lady Bird‘s Laurie Metcalf won the Best Supporting Actress trophy.

Call Me By Your Name has now won two Best Picture trophies (LAFCA, Gotham Awards), and is likely to win the same trophy from the 2018 Spirit Awards, which has nominated Guadagnino’s film for six awards. Chalamet has won Best Actor from both LAFCA and the New York Film Critics Circle, plus a Breakthrough Actor award from the Gothams. Dafoe seems all but unstoppable with Supporting Actor trophies from LAFCA, NYFCC and the National Board of Review. Metcalf has taken the Best Supporting Actress awards from LAFCA and the National Board Of Review.

Earlier: I was talking to a friend last night about this morning’s Los Angeles Film Critics Association voting, and he went “Yeah, well.” What, you don’t think they’re influential or at least interesting? “I don’t know that anyone cares all that much,” he replied. “They always seem to go with off-the-wall picks. We’ll see.”

Talk about flaky — the LAFCA website has a LATEST NEWS crawl on the top, and one of the headlines says “LAFCA names Moonlight as Best Film of 2016.”

10:57 am: They’re voting right now, the bagel-and-cream cheese-and-onions gang, and the first winner is…

11:13 am: Best Cinematography: Dan Laustsen, The Shape of Water. (Runner-up: Roger Deakins, Blade Runner 2049.) HE comment: What about Dunkirk‘s Hoyte von Hoytema?

11:25 am: Best Music/Score: Johnny Greenwood, Phantom Thread. (Runner-up: Alexandre Desplat, The Shape of Water.) HE comment: 1st runner-up support for Desplat plus dp Dan Lausten‘s win obviously suggests strong current for The Shape of Water. Will Guillermo’s erotic-aquatic fable take the Best Picture prize?

11:40 am: Best Supporting Actor: Willem Dafoe‘s harried, exasperated but altogether decent motel manager in Sean Baker‘s The Florida Project. Runner-up: Sam Rockwell‘s effed-up deputy sheriff in in Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri. HE comment: Okay, fine.

11:51 am: Best Production Design: Blade Runner 2049‘s Dennis Gassner. Runner-up: The Shape Of Water‘s Paul D. Austerberry. Excerpt from my BR49 review: “Deakins has done his usual first-rate job here and everyone knows he’s well past due, but the real whoa-level work is by production designer Dennis Gassner and supervising art director Paul Inglis.” HE comment: Another Shape of Water runner-up vote! Clearly there’s a hardcore contingent that will vote for Shape of Water in any category, come hell or high water.

12:01 pm: Best Editing award goes to Dunkirk‘s Lee Smith. Runner-up: I, Tonya‘s Tatiana S. Riegel.

12:06 pm: Lady Bird‘s Laurie Metcalf win LAFCA’s Best Supporting Actress award. Runner-up: Mudbound‘s Mary J. Blige.

12:17 pm: Winner of LAFCA’s Documentary/Nonfiction award is Agnes Varda and JR’s Faces Places. Runner-up: Brent Morgen‘s Jane, a doc about chimpanzeetarian Jane Goodall, which had its big L.A. premiere at the Hollywood Bowl.

[Brunch break] [HE nap break]

2:09 pm: For LAFCA’s Foreign Language Film award, a tie between Robin Campillo‘s BPM (Beats per Minute) and Andrej Zvyagintsev‘s utterly brilliant Loveless. LAFCA’s animated feature award went to The Breadwinner and not Disney’s Coco. The Best Screenplay award was won by Jordan Peele‘s Get Out. Runner-up: Martin McDonagh‘s screenplay for Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri.

3:15 pm: LAFCA’s Best Picture of 2017 is Luca Guadagnino‘s Call me By Your Name — all is forgiven, no more bagel and cream cheese jokes until next year. Runner-up: The Florida Project. The Best Director Award is a tie between CMBYN‘s Luca Guadagnino and The Shape of Water‘s Guillermo del Toro. Best Actor is CMBYN‘s Timothee Chalamet (runner-up: James Franco, The Disaster Artist). The Best Actress award has gone to The Shape of Water‘s Sally Hawkins

Earlier: If I was there voting with Bob Strauss, Myron Meisel, John Powers and the rest of them, I would toast my bagel just so, going for a nice light brown color. Then I’d add a schmear of Philadelphia 1/3 Less Fat Cream Cheese, a few slim rings of red onion, a thin slice of lox, some diced Roman tomatoes.

Wonder Guys

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The Wonder Wheel quartet — Kate Winslet, Jim Belushi, Juno Temple and Justin Timberlake — sat for a 10 pm q & a last night inside the Arclight Cinerama Dome. Moderator Pete Hammond presided over what turned out to be a lively, somewhat competitive conversation.

Winslet, trying to land one of the five Best Actress nomination slots (and in so doing will have to dislodge one of the well-ensconced pack leaders — Frances McDormand, Sally Hawkins, Meryl Streep, Saoirse Ronan or Margot Robbie), scored first with a riff about the high-quality script, the responsibility of making a melodramatic, life-and-death piece come to life, and the excitement of working with director-writer Woody Allen.


(l. to. r.) Wonder Wheel costars Juno Temple, Jim Belushi, Justin Timberlake, Kate Winslet, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond.

Then it was Justin Timberlake‘s turn, but he took too long in telling about his initial meeting with Allen. (Woody doesn’t audition his actors — he just smiles and says “hi.”) Then the effusive Belushi had the mike (both he and Timberlake stood up and acted out portions of their stories), and then the British-born Temple, who arguably gives the most open-hearted, least-denial-imprisoned performance in the film, had a couple of minutes. And then Winslet took over again. And then Timberlake and Belushi got into a joust.

It was a four-way competition of sorts, a friendly scrimmage about who could score with the most interesting observations and/or pass along the most amusing anecdotes.

For some reason the Arclight staff refused to turn up the lights, which made the actors harder to see, caused the photos to look grainy and rendered the brief video clip I shot all but worthless. Winslet, Belushi and Timberlake were immediately swarmed by security guards when the chat ended. Temple, on the other hand, was cool with mingling and posing for selfies, etc.

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Cruel, Scrooge-Ugly, Naked Greed

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I had trouble laughing last night, or feeling any kind of mirth for that matter. One of the most grotesque and calamitous tax revision bills in U.S. history, passed by gargoyle righties and abetted by Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) and Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake (so much for their recently burnished reputations) + a tax-bill provision that will damage the effectiveness of the Affordable Care Act + a decent chance that Alabama Senatorial candidate Roy Moore, sexual misconduct allegations notwithstanding, is going to defeat Doug Jones. (Or maybe not.)

“With barely a vote to spare early Saturday morning, the Senate passed a tax bill confirming that the Republican leaders’ primary goal is to enrich the country’s elite at the expense of everybody else, including future generations who will end up bearing the cost. The approval of this looting of the public purse by corporations and the wealthy makes it a near certainty that President Trump will sign this or a similar bill into law in the coming days.

“The bill is expected to add more than $1.4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade, a debt that will be paid by the poor and middle class in future tax increases and spending cuts to Medicare, Social Security and other government programs. Its modest tax cuts for the middle class disappear after eight years. And up to 13 million people stand to lose their health insurance because the bill makes a big change to the Affordable Care Act.” — from 12.2 N.Y. Times editorial, “A Historic Heist.”

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