I’m not of Irish descent but something about Ireland calmed me down when I visited there in the fall of ’88. A voice told me I was among friends or perhaps even my own through some obscure ancestral ink. Which is why I wangled an invite to tonight’s Irish shindig (an eighth annual Oscar Wilde celebration honoring the Irish in Film) happening at JJ Abrams‘ production company, Bad Robot. Last year Abrams (who co-hosts with wife Katie McGrath) was made an “honorary” Irishman. Colin Farrell, Liam Hemsworth, Jason O’Mara, Jason Schwartzman and Lily Collins are expected to attend.

What makes these wonderful flying bubbles cruise in perfect formation? Do the bubbles have some sort of navigational brain guiding them along that makes them turn or slow down or come in for a landing, and also some invisible telepathic propellant that speeds them up or slows them down? Are those emerald-green dagger-like sculptures borrowed from the North Pole ice sculptures in Richard Donner‘s Superman 2?

CG is one of the worst things to happen to movies as it almost always dumbs things down and because over 95% of the time these idiotic ooh-ahh moments stop the narrative in its tracks.

An unpretentious, blunt-spoken director has shared his Oscar picks with Hollywood Reporter award-season columnist Scott Feinberg, and I think it’s interesting how much this guy sounds like me to a certain extent. He cuts right to the chase, doesn’t mince words and just lays his cards face-up. He knows more about the technical stuff than I do (“there were a lot of mismatching” cuts in Silver Linings Playbook, he says), and in some ways he reveals himself as not especially hip or sophisticated (“No is a very good film, but it’s shot in a very weird way“). But Feinberg’s piece is a pretty good capturing of how a lot of people in this town think.

I’m guessing that the guy is in his early to mid 50s because (a) he says he voted online “because I want to feel young again” and (b) he describes a nominated short called Curfew as “the least depressing of five films guaranteed to prevent you from getting laid,” he says, “as I personally learned.” So he’s a bit of a hound and therefore probably unmarried.

He thinks for himself, that’s for sure. “Robert De Niro was just Robert De Niro” in Silver Linings, he says. “Yes, he had one crying scene, but crying is not enough. ” Not enough? There’s tons more to DeNiro’s performance than just that one bedside scene with Bradley Cooper but this guy….I’m starting to think this guy isn’t all that sharp. “Alan Arkin in Argo? I’m shocked he’s even nominated. Tommy Lee Jones has been such a bitter guy — all that scowling at the Golden Globes? I’m telling you, people don’t like the guy.” Then why did Jones with the SAG Best Supporting Actor award?

His Best Actor vote is going to Joaquin Phoenix in The Master, which he feels is “a performance for the ages. So much went into that performance. He created a character as distinct as Daniel Plainview…from always hunching and putting his right hand on his hip to crying as he’s being audited.” Not to mention Phoenix constantly sipping from a flask to his serpent-like manner and the way he sometimes behaves like Dwight Frye‘s Fritz in James Whale‘s Frankenstein.

To win the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, he says, “you usually have to make a film that makes people feel absolutely great or makes people feel like they want to slit their wrists. Something that’s jovial or something that’s important.” Getting the equation? If something is thoughtful or important it’s a downer. Jesus, this guy sounds like he’s 14 or something.

On the subject of Best Actress this guy conveys the essence of Lisa Taback‘s worst nightmare. “Jennifer Lawrence I was on the fence about, but she lost me with that Saturday Night Live bit,” he says. “I thought it was mean-spirited and shows a lack of maturity on her part. So, for me, it’s between Jessica Chastain and Emmanuelle Riva. I didn’t like Amour, but I think Riva was extraordinary in it. Chastain was just fantastic in Zero Dark Thirty — she is the major star of tomorrow and probably has another 10 Oscar nominations in her future. Meanwhile, Riva may not even live through Oscar night, so…”

Yesterday L.A. Times Steven Zeitchik and Nicole Sperling posted a story about Sony’s mishandling, certainly from an awards perspective, of the Zero Dark Thirty takedown. As we all know Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s film was zotzed by a series of articles and statements claiming that it endorsed torture. The bottom line is that Sony decided against responding to the charges in order to make more money at the box-office.

The Times story reiterates what was obvious to anyone following the ZD30 situation two months ago (or more specifically from early to late December), and then offers an explanation: Sony felt that getting into a debate with critics would scare audiences away, and so they went for the money. And yet they had to know, or at least strongly suspect, that industry sheep (including the Oscar-prognosticating kind) would be intimidated by the controversy and that maintaining silence would hurt the film awards-wise.

This is what corporations do, of course, and I don’t mean this as a criticism of the Sony guys. It’s just a statement of behavioral fact as explained by Joel Bakan‘s “The Corporation.” Bakan’s book (and the same-titled 2004 documentary based on his book) explained that corporations are, no offense, essentially sociopathic in the sense that they have only one goal, which is to maximize profit at all costs. So when it came to defending or not defending the honor and integrity of one of their films, the only question that really mattered to Sony was “which response will increase profits?”

Would Zero Dark Thirty have gone down to awards defeat even if Sony and the filmmakers had pushed back early and hard? Perhaps. Hard to say. Would a strong debate about the film being pro-torture or simply honest about what happened in the hunt for Osama bin Laden have hurt the box-office or perhaps cost several million dollars in revenue? Maybe. Who knows? I’m not saying Sony was wrong in how they played it. I’m just saying they played it the way any corporation would have.

“Sony and the filmmakers faced a dilemma, according to a series of recent interviews,” the article says. “Should they respond forcefully to the criticism and attempt to wrest control of the narrative? Or remain relatively quiet and try not to stoke the flames?

“Sony opted for the latter, partly concerned that fanning the flames would keep moviegoers away. And while the gambit paid off — the movie has grossed $85 million in the U.S. — the strategy appears to have hurt the film on the awards front. En route to Sunday’s Oscars, Zero Dark has been nearly shut out of awards — save for a Golden Globe and a Writers Guild prize — to some degree, voters say, because of the torture controversy.

“The filmmakers, who maintained that their movie takes no explicit position on torture, wanted to reply, and expressed [this desire] in a series of meetings with Sony and its awards consultants, according to a person familiar with the discussions who was not allowed to speak about them publicly.

“But the studio was concerned that a prolonged debate could deter moviegoers from coming out to see the film — would people want to see a movie if they were constantly being reminded by news headlines that it featured scenes of torture? They pleaded for silence until the Jan. 11 national release, hoping the furor would die down, the person familiar with the talks said. (Neither Bigelow nor Sony executives would speak on the record for this story.)”

On 12.24.12 I wrote the following: “The only thing that can save Zero Dark Thirty in the Best Picture race is a loud, coordinated, balls-out, full-court-press response by Sony Pictures publicity and the filmmakers and their top defenders, standing (or sitting) together at a press conference and declaring once and for all that ZD30 has been painted with smears by people with an agenda, and that it’s gotten out of hand and that the record is clear among those in the know and so on.

“Sony, in short, has to man up. They have to get tough and militant and explicit about this and slap down the film’s accusers and tell them to go eff themselves…or it’s over. It may be over already. I don’t know.

“I do know that this morning a CBS This Morning anchor stated that Sony “hasn’t responded” to the ZD30-criticizing letter from Acting CIA Director Michael Morell or to a similar letter written to Sony by Senators Diane Feinstein, John McCain and Carl Levin.

“Even with holiday distractions and whatnot, Sony’s silence on this matter has been deafening.”

Three days later (or 12.27.12) I wrote the following: “In an interview with N.Y. Times reporter Brooks Barnes, Kathryn Bigelow said she “was not particularly keen to discuss torture over lunch, partly because she wants her work to speak for itself and partly because she is aware that any public comments could just add fuel to the fire.”

“I love and admire Bigelow, but c’mon. The anti-ZD30 rhetoric has obviously been raging over the Christmas holidays, and it’s become clear that the Hollywood Stalinists have probably succeeded in tarring and feathering ZD30 by persuading those who refuse to venture beyond party-chat points that the film is pro-torture (which it’s NOT) and is therefore pushing a politically incorrect narrative. So at this point a little lighter fluid by way of a quote given to Barnes would hardly fucking matter.

“If I were Bigelow I would at least acknowledge that the Stalinists have probably wounded ZD30 badly enough to deny it the Best Picture Oscar, and that I hope they’re happy about that. I would also thank the Stalinists for giving us all an education about the hidden side of their nature.

“On top of which if there’s one thing that the Stalinist attack pieces have made clear, it’s that ZD30 isn’t speaking for itself in terms of this topic. As Barnes observes, ZD30‘s torture scenes “are presented with no obvious political tilt, creating a cinematic Rorschach test in which different viewers see what they want to see.”

A comedy about 40ish guys (Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn) losing their jobs and feeling desperate and humiliated at the hands of 20somethings might not be too bad. Vaughn and Wilson are good together. But anything directed by Shawn Levy scares me, and the last script co-authored by Vaughn and Jared Stern (Wreck-It Ralph) was The Watch.

I’m as good at guessing or calculating Oscar winners as the next guy, but I’ve never had much interest in Academy navel-gazing or microsopic tea-leaf readings. I really only care about (a) what I want to see win and (b) the apparently likely winners that have no business winning anything. The little man in my chest is telling me something or someone mostly un-predicted will win. Here are my predictions in the major categories plus some of the films and filmmakers that I feel should be winning.

Best Picture of the Year: Obviously Argo. Should win: Zero Dark Thirty. Would Love to See Win Despite The Odds: Silver Linings Playbook.

Best Director: Why does it have to be Ang Lee? I really can’t figure this. No one in earshot has expressed any strong feelings about Life of Pi over the last few weeks. Do people give Oscars to directors of films they mostly respect and admire, but no one is really nuts about? Why can’t the winner be Amour‘s Michael Haneke? Should win: Silver Linings Playbook‘s David O. Russell. Would Love to See Him Win Despite The Odds: Russell.

Best Actor: Obviously Lincoln‘s Daniel Day-Lewis.

Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook. If Amour‘s Emmanuelle Riva takes it, fine. It would actually be a fascinating moment. Lawrence is young, talented, rich…she’ll be totally fine. But I can’t believe that Riva will pull an upset. The little man in my chest can’t see it. It’s a pipe dream that, I suspect, is at least partly about certain columnists wanting to see a left-field occurence of some kind.

Best Supporting Actor: Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook. Because (a) he’s so alive and full of heart in SLP and (b) he campaigned like Bill Clinton did in ’92.

Best Supporting Actress: Obviously Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables.

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Movie Godz don’t want this to happen but the winner will almost certainly be Argo‘s Chris Terrio. I wouldn’t mind if Tony Kushner wins for Lincoln because he’s a good fellow. I don’t blame him for the Connecticut wrongo — that was Spielberg’s doing.

Best Original Screenplay: Zero Dark Thirty, Mark Boal. The very least the Academy can do to make up for that shameful (and regrettably successful) ZD30 takedown effort by the Stalinists. Might Win: Amour, Michael Haneke. It will be nothing short of a howling travesty if Django Unchained wins.

Best Animated Feature: Wreck-It Ralph, Rich Moore. But I don’t really know or care. Most animated films bore me.

Best Cinematography: I know Seamus McHarvey won’t win for Anna Karenina, but he should and that’s all I care about. Who’s going to win? Life of Pi‘s Claudio Miranda because the 3D images look like pretty CG candy? I will take it as a still personal rebuke if Lincoln‘s Janusz Kaminski wins.

Best Costume Design: No question it’ll be Anna Karenina‘s Jacqueline Durran. Right?

Best Documentary: Searching for Sugar Man. Should Win: Dror Moreh‘s The Gatekeepers.

Best Editing: Argo, William Goldenberg. Should Win: Zero Dark Thirty, Dylan Tichenor and William Goldenberg.

Best Foreign Language Film: Obviously Michael Haneke‘s Amour. If Amour didn’t have it in the bag the winner would be/should be Pablo Larrain‘s No.

People writing pitch and request letters need to banish the word “wanted” and the couplet “would like” from their vocabularies. “I would like to tell you about,” etc. “I wanted to share with you,” etc. Oh, you’d “like” to tell me something or you “wanted” to tell me something but you’re not 100% certain you do want to tell me something? Still mulling it over? It sounds gelatinous and wishy-washy. Man up, cut the conditionals.

Jennifer Lawrence and David O.Russell have formed a kind of Leonardo DiCaprio-Martin Scorsese alliance. Or the beginnings of one. What would you call Lawrence starring in Silver Linings Playbook plus costarring in Russell’s untitled Abscam movie plus (according to Deadline‘s Mike Fleming) just signing to star in Russell’s The Ends Of The Earth, an early-to-mid 20th Century Midwestern romance, based on a true story.

The kicker is that Earth is about a father-and-adopted-daughter relationship that graduates, almost Woody Allen-style, into a marriage.

Ernest Whitworth (or E.W.) Marland (1874-1941) was an Oklahoma-based oil tycoon and politician. In 1916 he and his wife Virginia, who were childless, adopted Virginia’s nephew and niece, 19 year-old George and 16 year-old Lydie. Virginia died in 1926. Two years later Marland had Lydie’s adoption annulled, and then he married her. She was 28 and he was 54. He lost much of his fortune in the late ’20s but they stayed together until E.W.’s death on 10.3.41, at the age of 67. Lydie lived a spotty and itinerant life after that. She died at age 87.

Who’s going to play Marland? Tom Cruise? Naah, too short.

The script for the Weinstein Co. project has been written by Argo‘s Chris Terrio. The producers are Todd Black, Steve Tisch and Jason Blumenthal of Escape Artists.

This seems like a weird project for Russell, which feels like something Terrence Malick might have directed in the ’70s. Russell is more of a present-tense type of guy. It sounds like a little bit of Giant or Days of Heaven mixed in with an inappropriate, vaguely scandalous father-daughter attraction, not exactly incestuous but close enough. I wonder what Russell sees in this. Honestly? It doesn’t sound all that commercial. It sounds vaguely icky.

I suspect that most of the mocking responses to yesterday’s Jewish WASP piece, in which I said that despite my English-German heritage I feel like I’m a “member of the tribe” by way of manner and temperament, were about fears of social-cultural dilution. If you’re part a close-knit tribe you don’t want any Anglo Saxon dilletantes messing things up, even if they identify with and admire said manners and temperaments. All I know is that I’ve always felt more urban Jewish than suburban WASP…a lot more. I mean that sincerely and reverently.

Anyway, the following letter from Las Vegas Review-Journal staffer Carol Cling (who used to be the movie critic there) is fairly written:

“I was somewhat taken aback by your comments about Drew Barrymore‘s conversion to Judaism and your own characterization of yourself as a ‘Jewish WASP.’ Sorry, but you’re confusing cultural stereotypes with something that can (and, for some of us tribe members, should) be much more.

“For some Jews (whom you described), Judaism is nothing more than an ethnic background. For others, it’s a way of life. It’s a personal decision either way.

“For most of my life, as a nice Jewish girl who’s not from New York, not a JAP and not from a family that argued and yelled all the time, I’ve had to put up with people telling me ‘You don’t act Jewish.’ (I once had a deskmate from Brooklyn who used to say, ‘You know how Jewish families are,’ and I always had to remind him, ‘Maybe your family’s like that, Dave, but mine isn’t.’)

“Also, we also never drank Mott’s Apple Juice. My sister was addicted to Welch’s grape juice, though.

“There are many Jews who fit your description and many others who don’t. But for you to presume that ‘being Jewish is a matter of blood and to some degree conviction, but I feel it’s also a matter of personality — how you think, act and behave’ is the very definition of chutzpah.

“Besides, when it comes to Jewish behavior, being a mensch is the most important thing…and I don’t know that a mensch would be so quick to generalize about something he doesn’t know from direct experience. (It would be like me telling a Christian what Christmas is all about when I’ve never celebrated it and have only observed others doing so.)

“Anyway, just wanted to share my thoughts. Best, Carol.

“P.S. Thanks for posting the vintage Siskel-and-Ebert clip. Gene was my mentor (I met him in 1971 through his niece, who was a fellow ‘cherub’ at Northwestern’s summer journalism workshop) and he was the walking, talking definition of a mensch.”

Wells to Cling: I know from direct experience. Having quite a few Jewish friends in the TriState area over the last 35 years counts for some kind of direct link, I think. I generally know Jewish culture by growing up in New Jersey and living in Manhattan for several years. And from being fairly close with Jewish girlfriends. And from absorbing the wit and wisdom of my old-time Jewish showbiz and literary heroes (Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Lenny Bruce, Phillip Roth, etc.) I look at what urban and suburban Jews seem to be about temperamentally and personality-wise and I look at what many Connecticut WASPs are like, and I don’t even have to think about it — except for the food and the wine and all the religious-faith stuff I feel much more at home with the Hebes.

“But twice when I was younger I was told in no uncertain terms that the parents of my Jewish friends don’t feel this same closeness. I attended a large wedding reception in Bridgeport for a close Jewish pal in ’80 or thereabouts, and the goyim (myself plus two or three other non-Jewish chums) were all given seating at a table that was right next to the kitchen door, which swung open at least 200 times during the luncheon and the toasts. I also was close to a Jewish girlfriend in ’79. My memory’s a little foggy but her parents tasted some kind of Holocaust-related trauma during World War II, and she once told me there was no way she could ever introduce me to them.

“Did that give me pause? Of course not. My friends felt one way, their parents another. I am and always will feel, for what it’s worth, like an honorary member of the tribe.”

Two and a half years after debuting at the Munich Film Festival, a little more than two years after screening at the 2011 Palm Springs Film Festival and roughly two years after opening commercially in Europe, Baran bo Odar‘s The Silence is finally opening on 3.8. The fact that this “icy” murder-thriller fared well with British critics suggests quality, but no viewing opportunities have been offered. Can I get a screener or something?

During yesterday afternoon’s JFK-to-LAX Virgin America flight, I suffered yet again from a sociopathic seat-reclining asshole. Reclining his seat about 10 to 12 degrees messed with my 18 inches of private space and caused the usual rage and discomfort. I leaned forward and asked this malignant fuck if he’d mind not doing that. He obliged at first, and then about 20 minutes later he leaned back anyway, and then leaned back a bit more. I should have upped the ante, but I wimped out and just sat there and took it like Neville Chamberlain.

And then this morning I came upon a Dan Kois Slate article called “The Recline and Fall of Western Civilization,” and said to myself, “What timing!” How many thousands had the same reaction?

Kois writes entertainingly and constructively about this problem. Boiled down he (a) restates what I’ve been declaring for years, which is that people who recline their seats too much are unregenerate fiends, (b) acknowledges that the real problem is airlines allowing seats to recline too much in the first place, (c) urges that they stop allowing this, and (d) supplies a URL for a device called a Knee Defender that prevents this. I’ve already ordered mine.

From a June 2011 HE piece:

“One should never get into a slapping match with a seat-recliner. The way to deal with this is to (a) politely ask the offender to grow some manners and decency and respect the 18″ private-space rule, and when he doesn’t (because they never listen) (b) ‘accidentally’ spill wine or Coke or coffee on his head. Offer sincere and heartfelt apologies and offer to get him some napkins. If he doesn’t adjust his seat, repeat the procedure.

“People who recline their seats in coach are scum — there are no two ways about it. The second-worst offenders are parents with infants who won’t stop crying, which is obviously due to over-coddling. The third-worst offenders are fat-asses and really old people who wait until the very last second when the flight is disembarking to stand up and take their carry-on luggage out of the overhead compartment (which always takes forever), causing everyone behind them to wait and wait and wait.”

Just after the February 2nd Jennifer Lawrence tribute at the Santa Barbra Film Festival, I asked if I could show the tribute reel. It was sent to me yesterday, but when I uploaded it to YouTube the embed code was disabled due to some petty copyright bullshit. I’m uploading it to Vimeo as we speak (who knows if the Vimeo embed codes will be blocked also?) but in the meantime here’s a YouTube link.

And here’s an excerpt from remarks spoken on 2.2 by Santa Barbara Film Festival director Roger Durling:

“Lawrence’s performance as Tiffany, the grieving young widow who befriends, falls for and helps to save Bradley Cooper‘s Pat, is about a million miles away from her turn in The Hunger Games, delivering a deft comic side and a romantic longing flecked with electric energy. She’s a feisty force of nature recalling Cher in Moonstruck in 1987. Like Carole Lombardin My Man Godfrey in 1936, and the way Diane Keaton fleshed out Annie Hall in 1977. Like Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve in 1938, and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night in 1934.

“But Tiffany is totally contemporary, totally new. She’s flawed and damaged. She’s made mistakes — and continues to make mistakes. But she’s made peace with her
imperfections and tries to persuade Cooper’s bipolar protagonist to do the same.

“Before Silver Linings Playbook Lawrence had done fiery, intense performances; with Silver Linings Playbook Lawrence delivers a fiery, intense, movie-star performance. She dominates the proceedings without artifice or hammy overacting. She is the first breath of fresh air to be breathed into the motion picture industry in a very very long time.”

The Lawrence tribute reel was assembled by Durling and Dana Morrow.