Jeffrey Wells

Kim Novak‘s complaint about The Artist having used a long segment of Bernard Herrmann‘s Vertigo score in its final act is understandable, but she’s not saying anything startling. The basic strategy of The Artist is “sampling” elements from the past — primarily the aura of silent black-and-white cinema, and plots from A Star Is Born and Singin’ in the Rain — and re-packaging them. So using Herrmann’s Vertigo score falls right into line.

Mike Fleming‘s Deadline story quotes Novak’s manager Sue Cameron as follows: “[Kim] was sitting in her living room, she put the DVD in, and then went into an absolute state of shock and devastation…she is very, very upset.”

Novak has taken out a trade out that reads, in part, “My body of work has been violated by The Artist. Even though they did given Bernard Herrmann a small credit at the end, I believe this kind of filmmaking trick to be cheating. Shame on them! This kind of ‘borrowing’ could portend a dangerous future for all artists in film. It is morally wrong of people in our industry to use and abuse famous pieces of work to gain attention and applause for other than what the original work was intended.”

I have no argument with Novak, but I’m a bit surprised by two things written by Fleming in his report.

One, he says that “I don’t think I’ve heard a complaint quite like this one before…how many will recognize music from a film released in 1958?” WHAT? If you’re any kind of a genuine Film Catholic, which is what Academy members should ideally be (and what the best of them are), Herrmann’s Vertigo score is one of the most legendary and immediately recognizable film scores of all time — right up there with Max Steiner‘s Gone With The Wind theme and John Williams‘ bum-buhm-buhm-buhm shark them in Jaws. I’ll bet that even casual film dilletantes know Herrmann’s Vertigo score like the back of their hand, and yet Fleming is wondering “how many will recognize [it]”??

And two, Fleming writes that “one looming question is whether Novak has jeopardized her status as a voter, and violated the rules by publicly maligning a movie that is a frontrunner for Best Picture.” Apparently there’s an Academy rule found in Oscars.org that says an Academy member can’t take out an ad that trashes a film in contention for Best Picture. As far as I can discern that rule doesn’t especially or particularly apply if the film being maligned “is a fronturnner for Best Picture.”

A pro-Newt Gingrich but more precisely anti-Mitt Romney attack infomercial called King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came To Town will be shown to South Carolina voters this week. Producer Barry Bennett has told N.Y. Times reporters Trip Gabriel and Nicholas Confessorre that the Obama campaign “is going to have a heyday with this, and Republicans need to know this story before we nominate [Romney].”

The doc was funded by Sheldon Adelson, “a billionaire casino owner in Las Vegas who has long supported Mr. Gingrich.” The operational engine is a Gingrich-supporting Super PAC called Winning Our Future.

The rap against Romney is that Bain Capital, a private equity firm that he once ran, bought companies and dumped employees and then re-sold them. Bain was co-founded in 1984 by Romney ands two others. “In 1983, Bill Bain offered Romney the chance to head a new venture that would invest in companies and apply Bain’s consulting techniques” — i.e., rape and pillage — “to improve operations,” one account says. Romney led the business from 1984 to 1990 and then 1992 to 1999.”

Capitalism often enforces a harsh Darwinian process. It’s not about the playing of tiddly-winks by choir boys and Boy Scouts with merit badges. Not in the big leagues, it isn’t.

Why are all of Romney’s alleged victims in this clip old and pudgy and rednecky, and mostly female? Remember the toothless woman in the third-act dinner scene in Deliverance, the one who told a story about a cucumber or an ear of corn (or some other kind of vegetable) being “twelve inches long”?

I can say definitively that Pabst Blue Ribbon is a big favorite among 20something Brooklyn hipsters (my son Jett included) because it’s cheap. You see it everywhere in Williamsburg bars. “PBR, PBR, PBR…” When I first heard the acronym I thought it was a reference to “PBR street gang,” a code term for Martin Sheen‘s watercraft heading upriver in Apocalypse Now.

An all-region British Bluray of Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s tediously talky Cleopatra (’63) will be available in three weeks. The 20th Century Fox release opened in June ’63 so where do they get off calling it a 50th anniversary edition?

I hate to admit it but I’ll be buying this damn thing because it was shot by Leon Shamroy in 70mm Todd-AO and will therefore almost certainly look immaculate on Bluray. I can watch stodgy big-studio films if they were shot by seasoned pros on expensive large-format stock. I have that skill, that knack. I shut my mind off and meditate on the resolution and the tonalities and push the other stuff aside.

Update: It turns out the British version is good for regions A, B and C. The Amazon page says it’s only Region 2.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cleopatra-Blu-ray-Elizabeth-Taylor/dp/B005QV2OV6/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1326079675&sr=1-1

Here’s my best Cleopatra piece, called “20 Brilliant Seconds.”

What New York critic called Cleopatra a “monumental mouse” in her review? Not Kael.

Outside Palm Springs Starbucks on Rte. 111 — Sunday, 1.8, 1:10 pm.

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After watching and really enjoying Jose Padilha‘s Elite Squad: The Enemy Within last night at the Palm Springs Film Festival, I’m convinced that (a) it should definitely be considered as one of the top Best Foreign Film Oscar nominees because good is good regardless of genre, and (b) Padilha’s U.S.-funded Robocop remake, which he’s now working on in Los Angeles, has an excellent shot at being fantastic.

I don’t have any excuse for ignoring this exceptional socio-political action thriller when it opened in the U.S. last November. No excuse whatsoever. I apologize. It was lazy and wrong.

I also apologize for the murky sound in the two videos posted within this story. I shot them during last night’s post-screening q & a at Palm Springs’ Regal plex. I was sitting only ten feet from Padilha, but the iPhone 4S simply isn’t as sensitive as my Canon Elph, which I left back in West Hollywood.

While Padilha’s Elite Squad (’07) took heat in some quarters for seeming to favor hard-ass paramilitary “skull” assaults against Brazilian “favela” drug gangsters, this superior sequel has the first film’s tough-guy hero Nascimento (Wagner Moura) getting promoted out of the skulls and into Brazil’s wiretap king, which eventually leads to a pitched battle against corrupt cops and sociopathic government slimeballs.

It’s a highly-charged, super-thrilling, ultra-violent ride from stat to finish. It’s mainly about pacing and velocity and less about character, but there’s sufficient enough attention paid to the things that any good action film needs — motivation, personality, one thing leading to another out of necessity, etc.

I’m going to sit down with Padilha in Beverly Hills tomorrow. I’ll run our chat in mp3 and video form.

N.Y. Times reporter Michael Cieply has broken the news that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ documentary branch members are basically looking to cut down the number of films they’ll have to watch in a given year, and so they’re about to announce a rule that a doc has to be reviewed by The New York Times or The Los Angeles Times to qualify for a Best Feature-Length Doc Oscar.

When the new rule goes into effect the non-theatrical riff-raff can be ignored like Semper Fi and the doc committee guys won’t have to watch as many films. Which indirectly means they’ll have more time to play tennis and eat long brunches and take walks with their wives and/or girlfriends and get to hang with their grandchildren in a more leisurely, open-ended way.

Ric Robertson, the Academy’s chief operating officer, confirmed to Cieply that the new rule “would be made public this week and would apply to films qualifying for the 2013 ceremony.”

Will SAG members understand and perhaps be swayed by James Franco‘s plea for respect and recognition (i.e., a Best Supporting Actor nomination) for Rise of the Planet of the Apes‘ Andy Serkis? Franco’s thoughts appeared earlier this afternoon on Deadline.com, and they’re very well-composed. Franco sounds like an actor talking straight to other actors, explaining the technological facts without any b.s.

Andy Serkis, James Franco in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

“I, as much as anyone, can get anxious when I think about the future of movies and the possibility of the obsolescence of actors, or at least actors as we know them,” Franco states. “But after making Apes I realize that this is backward thinking.

“Performance Capture is here, like it or not, but it also doesn’t mean that old-fashioned acting will go the way of silent film actors. Performance Capture actually allows actors to work opposite each other in more traditional ways, meaning that the actors get to interact with each other and look into each other’s eyes.

“For years computer technology forced actors to act opposite tennis balls if a movie wanted to have CG creatures, but now the process has come full circle so that actors playing CG creatures can perform in practical sets, just like the ‘human’ actors. In acting school I was taught to work off my co-stars, not to act but react and that was how I would achieve unexpected results, not by planning a performance, but by allowing it to arise from the dynamic between actors.

“On Rise of the Planet of the Apes that’s exactly what I was able to do opposite Andy as Caesar. And Andy got to do the same because every gesture, every facial expression, every sound he made was captured. His performance was captured. Then what the Weta effects team did was to essentially ‘paint’ the look of Caesar over Andy’s performance. This is not animation as much as it’s digital make-up.”

I’ve already said if I was a Republican (which will never ever happen) I’d be for John Huntsman, whose disdain for the nutbag Tea Party right makes him a kind of 21st Century Nelson Rockefeller. But he really distinguished himself last night by slapping down Mitt Romney during the New Hampshire Republican debate. Big money: “This country is divided because of attitudes like that.”

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I’m being kicked out of the hotel so I have to pack the bags and then file a bit more from a Starbucks or someplace before driving back to Los Angeles. This day is a mess.

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I’ve been living an almost spartan life lately. By my standards at least. Nocturnally speaking. The no-hard-stuff rule (in force since the mid ’90s) plus mostly abstaining from wine, but when I’m so inclined I’ll have no more than two glasses. But it feels better the next morning when I don’t go there at all. Plus I’m riding my bike again and feeling better. But last night that all went south.

I was feeling sharp and attuned and really excited about having seen Jose Padilha‘s Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within. So I went to the Ace Hotel party and had three vodka and grapefruits over the span of two hours.

What was I thinking? I’ll tell you what I was thinking. I was thinking “I am the Lizard King…I can do anything.”

I slept badly and woke up at 4:30 am and crashed again at 6:30 am, and now the morning is shot and I’m supposed to be out of the hotel to make way for the maid. And I haven’t written anything yet. Well, I’m writing this. I’ve no choice but to blow off the Parker Hotel Variety brunch (11 am to 1 pm). And all because of Padilha and his excellent political action-thriller, which I forgot to see last November when it opened in Los Angeles. I’ve no rational excuse for having dropped the ball on that, let alone for last night’s lack of discipline. I feel badly, embarassed. I need to just file and not be social.

At least I wasn’t driving last night. The Ace is only a few hundred yards from the Travelodge.

Surely some HE regulars have gone to Devil Inside shows yesterday or today. Has anyone thrown up on the lobby carpet in response to the shitty ending? Or pissed on it? Has anyone pulled out a knife and slashed the screen from end to end? Has anyone thrown giant-size drinks at the screen? Has anyone seen any ushers get beaten up?