A tip of the hat to Fox Searchlight for acquiringSteve McQueen‘s NC-17 Shame. As I more or less said in my Telluride review, it’s hard to like Shame as you’re watching it (because it’s so friggin’ bleak) but it’s all but impossible to not think about it, a lot, after it’s over. It might become a modest commercial hit (maybe0, but the Academy blue-hairs are going to blow this movie off so fast your head will spin. Nonetheless, any distributor that puts cash on the barrelhead for a bona fide art film has my admiration.
Another quote from my Telluride Shame review: “This is what an art film does — it just stands its ground and refuses to do anything you might want it to do.”
At last night’s Ides of March party Phillip Seymour Hoffman — a.k.a. “Philly” — insisted that Paul Thomas Anderson‘s The Master, which he just finished filming, is “not a Scientology film.” But I’ve read an early draft and it seems to be about a Scientology-like cult, i said to him. And I’ve read about the parallels. “I don’t know what you’ve heard and what script you’ve read,” Hoffman replied. “Trust me, it’s not about Scientology.”
Maybe not specifically or literally, but there are just too many proofs and indications that The Master (or whatever it’s eventually going to be called) is at least about a cult with a charismatic L. Ron Hubbard-type leader that could be seen as a metaphor for Scientology. At least that. Read this February 2010 Playlist analysis and tell me it’s not that. And that Hoffman’s denial isn’t perhaps a little too definitive.
(l. to r.) Kate Mara, Ides of March costar Max Minghella, Max’s mom Carolyn Choa, Ides director-cowriter-star George Clooney at Friday night’s ides of March party at Soho Room/Club/whatever in downtown Toronto.
(l. to r.) Santa Barbara Film Festival chief Roger Durling, The Artist star Jean Dujardin, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond at Weinstein Co.’s Artist dinner at Roosevelt Room on Toronto’s Adelaide Street.
I’m on my way to an Ides of March party that starts at 7 pm and then another one for the Weinstein Co.’s The Artist, but I have to at least paste a couple of tweets about Gerado Naranjo‘s Miss Bala, which I missed in Cannes but finally saw today. Tweet #1: “If Michelangelo Antonioni had made a movie about a Mexican beauty queen grappling with drug gangsters, the result might have been Miss Bala.” Tweet #2: “Naranjo has totally ignored the chaotic action aesthetic of Michael Bay & acolytes, and delivered an action thriller with a truly elegant visual style. Long shots and almost no cut-cut-cut-cuting.”
Toronto’s King Street just before yesterday afternoon’s screening of The Ides of March.
All I’m seeing today are Miss Bala, Sarah Palin, You Betcha! and one other…possibly Burning Man. Plus parties for The Ides of March and The Artist and possibly one other, depending.
I ran a shot like this last year so I’m just repeating myself. Podiatry-wise, the only thing worse than having big beefy man-feet is to walk around with disgusting leather mandals and to tell yourself, “Yeah…these look pretty cool.” I took this yesterday inside…now I can’t remember but it was somewhere in Toronto.
I’ll be appalled for the rest of my life that my Reel.com editor (whose name I’m not going to mention) chose to summarize the column that I wrote from the Toronto Film Festival on the evening of 9.11.01, and which appeared the following day, as follows: “Jeffrey Wells reports on the toll that current events have had on the Toronto Film Festival, and tries to muster enthusiasm for films that have screened, including Lantana, Monsoon Wedding, and Last Orders.”
This was back in the day when entertainment websites wrote about and/or acknowledged only entertainment subjects…even if the horrible death of nearly 3000 people from jumping or flames or being crushed had led to a major film festival deciding to halt its various programs to show respect and take a breather. Even then, Reel.com felt that it was better to not be too specific (don’t want to encourage people to not think about movies!) and to refer to this slaughter as “current events.” Thank God that mentality has been entirely rubbed out on the web.
Koch Entertainment’s One-Eyed Jacks Bluray (out 11.8) will, of course, be some kind of high-def enhancement of a public-domain version, and all One-Eyed Jacks public domain versions are shit. There was a laser disc version that I owned in the early to mid ’90s that wasn’t too bad, so maybe Koch’s Bluray will be the equal of that. If it is I’m buying it…fool that I am.
This near-great 1961 psychological western has to be freed from public-doman jail and remastered and made into a eye-popping Bluray by its owner, Paramount Pictures. But of course Paramount Home Video has so far refused to even create a mint-condition Bluray of Shane, one of Hollywood’s all-time great westerns, so what are the odds of them doing the right thing by Marlon Brando‘s film?
It’s called bad (i.e., thoughtless, sociopathic) parenting. Shame on this and all the other corporate video divisions who care nothing…okay, very little for Hollywood history and heritage and want nothing more than to make money.
One-Eyed Jacks was the last Paramount film shot in VistaVision, a 35mm large-format system, and that’s why it’ll look close to breathtaking when and if it ever gets properly Blurayed.
With In Contention‘s Guy Lodge having posted a Venice Film Festival pan of Ami Canaan Mann ‘s Texas Killing Fields (Anchor Bay, 10.7), it seems fair to post my own reaction, which is a bit more favorable but only a bit.
Texas Killing Fields costars Sam Worthington, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Chloe Moretz, Stephen Graham, Jessica Chastain and Annabeth Gish. I reported in mid-August that it’s about the Texas I-45 Murders, a series of unsolved killings of prostitutes and lonely girls in the ’80s, probably by more than one assailant, in a blighted area south of Houston near Interstate I-45, which runs from Dallas down to Galveston Bay.
Mann, director of an earlier feature called Morning, is the daughter of Michael Mann, who produced this faintly-Zodiac-resembling crime drama.
I think it’s basically a highly intriguing, at times genuinely creepy, misshapen mess. There’s not enough of a story, the coverage is odd and haphazard, and it’s not long or complex enough to be a Zodiac-styled cold case movie. The tone lacks a commanding vision, a consistent aesthetic. It feels spotty and raggedy, but not un-intriguing for that.
Texas Killing Fields was obviously made by talented people looking do something extra. All the performances have something or other. All the leads are watchable and interesting, no phone-in performances. It’s atmospheric and creepy but…hello? It doesn’t go anywhere. It just ends with someone who seemed to be dead turning up not dead. And there’s a blonde bad guy who seems to be a prime suspect but then just suddenly shoots a minor character and disappears. I still don’t know what that was about.
Yesterday In Contention‘s Kris Tapleyexcerpted my Moneyball rave (thanks) but at the same time said “Jeff flies off the Oscar handle on dubious players too frequently to trust this just yet.” I don’t deserve that. I admit I’ve gotten it wrong from time to time, but hardly “frequently.” Generally my instincts are on-target, and I sure as hell know formulaic garbage when I see it. And I know when a film is up to something extra-special and worthwhile.
At the end of the day I’d rather be the guy who occasionally jumps on the wrong pogo stick than one who sneers at everyone and everything. If you can’t find true love in this racket you need to find another game.
Besides, what’s so off-the-handle about calling Moneyball “a smart, true-to-life, business-of-baseball movie with a touch of the mystical and the sublime, and propelled along by a highly pleasurable lead performance by Brad Pitt…a film made great not just [by] the emotional and spiritual currents, but the subtlety of them”? And declaring that Pitt is a Best Actor contender? He fucking is that.
Variety‘s Peter Debrugegot on the Moneyball wagon last night, calling it an “uncannily sharp, penetrating look at how Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane helped reinvent baseball based on statistics rather than near-superstitious thinking.
“Another approach might have treated the source material as exposition for a more conventional baseball story, but Moneyball is content to draw back the curtain and find drama in the dealings. Director Bennett Miller‘s low-key style suits that strategy nicely, breaking up shop-talk scenes with artful, quiet moments in which Beane steps away from the action, nicely captured by d.p. Wally Pfister.
“Pitt gives a genuinely soul-searching performance. He reaches for junk food when nervous and questions himself in solitary, but his best scenes are those featuring his daughter Casey (Kerris Dorsey). During family moments, including those featuring his ex-wife (Robin Wright) and her new beau (an uncredited Spike Jonze), Pitt reveals that Beane’s swagger is mostly for show, and his true nature is far more sensitive than anyone who’s seen him cut a player would guess.”
Debruge is wrong when he says that Pitt “sheds any trace of movie-star vanity by allowing himself to be seen as a has-been with a bad haircut.” Pitt’s hair is okay — not everyone is obliged to wear an unevenly cut gaybar spikey mousse cut. You have to have a mullet or something equally extreme to be called a “bad haircut” guy. And Pitt’s Billy Beane is only a has-been player in Moneyball — as a general manager of the Oakland A’s he’s alive and kicking and very much in the present.
MSN’s James Rocchi has written that Pitt’s Beane-inhabiting “forgoes shallow charm in the name of deeper, stranger currents of performance and persona.”
In a just-posted Best Actor predictions piece, Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet has written that “I also saw Moneyball yesterday and think Brad Pitt‘s performance is also likely to secure a nomination at this point.” He adds that he’s not as entirely confident about this as he is about George Clooney being nominated for his performance in The Descendants.
So I finally saw Steven Soderbergh‘s Contagion (i.e., in Manhattan the night before last) and re-discovered what I’d known all all along — that popcorn thrillers can be extremely cool and culturally nutritious if they’re (a) smart, (b) clever, (c) believable, (d) stylistically intriguing and (e) packaged with taste and class. Most thrillers fall short to varying degrees; many (especially those starring Jason Statham) are the cinematic equivalent of fast-food or Cinnabons. But not this puppy.
The Soderbergh pedigree alone should tell you that Contagion delivers with quiet pulsing authority and creepy chills. The reviews (mine included) will tell you that also. I can’t say it’s the kind of film that sticks to the ribs exactly because it’s mainly dramatizing standard fears of pandemic viruses and diseases that we carry around in our heads all the time anyway, but it’s done really well…and that’s the whole game. I especially admired Soderbergh’s decision to minimize emotional freakout scenes, which are always tedious when overdone.
My only beef is that I wish it could’ve lasted longer than 105 minutes. I could’ve easily rolled with a 120- or 150-minute version. (Maybe that’ll happen with the DVD/Bluray.) Oh, and I would’ve really liked to have seen it in IMAX. (Warner Bros. publicity didn’t offer that experience.) Maybe I’ll just pay for an IMAX viewing this weekend in Toronto. Why not, right?
Contagion is about a 100% fatal, one-touch virus that starts in Hong Kong and moves around the world in record time. It’s not just the “pathogen” (a term I wasn’t exactly familiar with before this film came out) that destroys so completely, but the panic that kicks in once people sense shortages and class favoritism and a lack of regulatory disclosure.
The strongest and most commanding characters are three women physician/scientists played by Kate Winslet, Jennifer Ehle and Marion Cotillard . After these three performance-wise comes Jude Law as an unscrupulous blogger who exploits the situation, etc. Matt Damon plays a kind of everyman dad who’s naturally immune to the plague. Laurence Fishburne plays a kind of compassionate bureaucratic elitist. Elliott Gould plays a diligent, independent-minded scientist. Bryan Cranston plays a military guy with a hairpiece. Demetri Martin plays a scientist with a 1964 Beatle haircut. Gwynneth Paltrow buys it early on, and then we get to see her scalp opened up and peeled back by autopsy guys. And John Hawkes, who always plays demonic nutters and fiends, surprises by playing a caring, mellow-attitude, non-psychotic dad….nice.
Contagion‘s ultra-believable script is by Scott Z. Burns. The production tab was $60 million or thereabouts. It began shooting almost exactly a year ago and wrapped last January. Soderbergh shot it himself with the Red Epic-X “Tattoo” digital camera. Locations include Switzerland, England, Dubai, San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago, Hong Kong, Minneapolis, Japan, Brazil, Russia, and Malaysia.
George Clooney‘s The Ides of March (Sony, 10.7) is a smart, taut political thriller — well-acted, gripping (particularly after the shit starts hitting the fan in Act Two) with a chilly, bitter edge. In a term, fully enjoyable. Plus it packs a stiffer, heavier punch than Beau Willimon‘s Farragut North, a 2008 political play that Clooney and Grant Heslov adapted for the screen, and in so doing added a third act involving sexual indiscretion.
Is Ides about us on some level? Does it reflect or shed light upon some universal current that we’ve all come to know and understand? No — it’s a high-end, thoroughly adult popcorn movie, and that’s totally fine. There’s nothing to bitch about or put down here. Well, you can but why? To what end?
The plot is about three shrewd political operatives (played by Ryan Gosling, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti) working for a pair of Democratic Presidential candidates during the Ohio primary. One of them is an (relatively) blunt-spoken liberal played by Clooney, called Mike Morris, and the other we never meet up close.
What is Ides basically saying? That big-time politics can be a rough snarly game, and that being dedicated and hard-working doesn’t mean jack — you can still get taken down if you don’t play your cards extra-carefully. And that the game basically stinks.
The piece starts to get interesting when Gosling’s Stephen, a young hotshot aide to Clooney, slipping into a semi-casual affair with Holly Stearns (Evan Rachel Wood ), a 20 year-old who works for the Morris campaign as an intern. And then we learn that someone else has had it off with Holly…all right, I’m not saying any more. But is a little action on the side really shocking in a campaign environment? Or in the world of politics itself? Post-Anthony Weiner what’s so bad about a politician (or his campaign manager or whomever) having an affair or a one-nighter with a more-or-less willing participant? Sounds pretty tame to me.
One of the strongest lines in the film, spoken by Gosling, goes something like “you can go to war or ruin the economy or protect the rich, but you don’t get to fuck the interns.” But don’t you? I mean, isn’t that par for the course? And does anyone really care? I realize, of course, that some people do care, still, but I sure as hell don’t, and no one who’s been around does so, you know, let it go already.
The bottom line is that The Ides of March does the job of a good political thriller — it grabs and rivets and enthralls — and that’s fine with me. And it ought to be fine with everyone else. It’s worth the price of admission.
Passport in hand, I caught a 12:30 pm Porter flight to Toronto and was cabbing toward my rental on Soho street by 2 pm. I picked up my press pass 45 minutes later, and am now sitting next to Joe Leydon in theatre #1 at the Bell Lightbox, waiting for George Clooney‘s The Ides of March at 4 pm.
