Day: February 20, 2018

In the wake of Kathryn Bigelow‘s Zero Dark Thirty, Jessica Chastain was basking in worldwide praise and a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance as Maya, a CIA officer who was super-focused on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. She was sitting on top of the world. She won the Golden Globe Award Best Actress for this performance, and was thereafter hailed for her strong turns in A Most Violent Year (’14), Miss Sloane (’16) and Molly’s Game (’17).

And now she’s about to costar in a New Line horror film, i.e., a sequel to Andy Muschietti‘s It? If you were Chastain, would you go up against Pennywise at this stage in your career? Something happens to a dramatic actress’s brand when she descends into horror.

Chastain is doing this for the dough, of course, but think of what happened to Vera Farmiga when she switched from sophisticated adult dramas (Down to the Bone, The Manchurian Candidate, Breaking and Entering, The Departed, Up in the Air) to that four-year Bates Motel series and those Conjuring movies and Liam Neeson schlock like The Commuter. She’s in Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner, true, but she’s mainly identified with pulp these days. She’s more or less regarded as a scream queen.

David Hare, S.J. Clarkson and Carey Mulligan‘s Collateral (Netflix, 3.9) is only 18 days away. A London-based crime thriller about an investigation into the murder of a pizza delivery guy. Set over the course of four days, it’s about Detective Inspector Kip Glaspie (Mulligan) becoming persuaded that the murder wasn’t some random thoughtless act.

Boilerplate: “Glaspie is caught up in a whirlwind investigation to track down the killer and uncover the darker underbelly behind the attack. Meanwhile, politician David Mars (John Simm) gets caught up in the drama through his turbulent relationship with his troubled and unpredictable ex-wife Karen (Billie Piper), and vicar Jane Oliver (Nicola Walker) is forced to conceal her affair with the only witness to the crime.”

This sounds potentially awesome. I adore smart and layered police procedurals, especially when written by someone as storied as Hare. And Mulligan just gets better and better — no stopping her.

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I’m looking forward to finally seeing Eugene Jarecki‘s The King within the next few weeks. I’ve missed it twice so far — a somewhat longer version that premiered at last May’s Cannes Film Festival under the title The Promised Land, and a tightened version that played Sundance ’18 under the current title. Oscilloscope will be releasing Jarecki’s doc “later this year,” according to Variety‘s Dave McNary in a piece that ran on 1.17.

Jarecki says the Cannes version “wasn’t finished” and that people who’ve seen both versions have found it “hugely changed.”

Condensed logline: “A musical road trip across America in Elvis Presley‘s 1963 Rolls Royce, and a doc that explores how a country boy lost his authenticity and became a king while his country lost her democracy and became an empire.”

Extended logline: “Featuring cameos from the likes of Alec Baldwin, Chuck D, Emmylou Harris, Ethan Hawke and Mike Myers and set 40 years after Presley’s death, the doc is about Jarecki recalling the country Presley left behind. From the deep south to New York, Las Vegas and beyond, a tapestry of luminaries and unknown Americans join the journey, expressing themselves in words and song.”

Excerpt from David Ehrlich’s Indiewire review, filed on 5.20.17: “A documentary as sprawling and brilliant and flawed as the country it traverses, The Promised Land is a fascinatingly overstuffed portrait of America in decline.

“In the process, it’s also (a) a biography of the 20th century’s most famous musician, (b) a story about how a man became king of a democratic nation, (c) a nuanced analysis of cultural appropriation in a multi-racial society, (d) a southern-fried rock n’ roll performance piece, (e) a horrifyingly sober look at the rise of Donald Trump, (f) a closed-casket funeral service for The American Dream, (g) the best recent film about how the hell we got here and more. So much more.

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Despite what Variety‘s Kris Tapley posted at the end of a 2.20 piece titled “Oscar Best Picture Winner Poised to Rout History,” Oscar balloting begins today (2.20) and finishes seven days hence (2.27). Tapley wrote that “final ballots go out Feb. 27.” In what descriptive or metaphysical realm are final Oscar ballots going “out” seven days from now? They need to be completed by that day and heading back “in“, no?

Hollywood Elsewhere feels obliged to remind Academy voters that giving your Best Picture vote to a film that doesn’t have the horses to even begin to qualify as the “best” film of the year by any seasoned criteria, despite the emotional chords it managed to strike in your chest cavity, is a perfectly natural thing, and you shouldn’t feel squeamish or hesitant about that.

Especially if you’re among the younger wave of Academy members, numbering 1457, who were invited to join in 2016 (683) and ’17 (774). You have earned your bones, newbies, and have a full and absolute right to get it wrong as much as those Academy members who gave the Best Picture Oscar to all those right-for-the-zeitgeist button pushers (Driving Miss Daisy, Chicago, The Greatest Show on Earth, Chariots of Fire, Crash, Forrest Gump, Around The World in Eighty Days) of the past. There’s no shame in this. Academy members have been embarassing themselves for decades. From time to time, I mean.

I guess I was wrong in stating yesterday that The Shape of Water is locked to win Best Picture. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe the “kooky” (Tom O’Neil‘s term) preferential ballot will allow a popular second-place contender to sneak in and take the prize. The beloved Guillermo del Toro is definitely assured of a Best Director win, and no one will steal pre-engraved Oscars from the four acting lockdowns (Oldman, McDormand, Rockwell, Janney), and the winner of the Best Original Screenplay will be…I’m undecided. Probably Get Out but Sunday’s Best Picture BAFTA win might have given Three Billboards some last-minute momentum. But all hail Call Me By Your Name‘s James Ivory, at least, for his guaranteed Best Adapted Screenplay win.

There are reportedly 6687 Academy members now, and the new crowd (1457) represents…what, 17% or 18% of the total?