Jeffrey Wells

Let’s say for the sake of argument I’m having this hypothetical conversation with these other guys, and someone asks if there’s a clear Best Picture frontrunner out there now. Let’s imagine this conversation and see where it goes.

“The Descendants has it all,” I would say. “And so does Moneyball. You or yours may not like that idea, but they both mix honest emotionalism (as opposed to cloying sentiment) with smarts and great style and thematic wholeness. They’re the top dogs of the quality-movie fraternity right now.

“The Artist is a lovely homage to Hollywood’s silent, black-and-white past as well as the tradition of A Star In Born and Singin’ in the Rain. It’s a must-see for even half-hearted Movie Catholics. But it’s also sloshing around in cloying oatmeal sentiment. The dog alone takes it out of consideration in my book.”

And this other guy, let’s say, says “not that I agree at all with the idea that The Artist is ‘sloshing around in cloying oatmeal sentiment’, but even if it was, since when would that be an Academy turn-off?”

And then he says there’s a certain comfort in knowing that others beside himself aren’t that much love with The Descendants. It’s Alexander Payne ‘s “least adventurous or affecting film,” he asserts. Beginnings of an anti-Descendants cabal?

And this other guy, let’s say, says he’ll take all serious bets that “there’s no way in hell either The Descendants or Moneyball win Best Picture. They’ll both get nominations but other than possibly Clooney for Best Actor and Best screenplay, Payne’s movie will have to be fine getting nominated but not winning anything.”

And I say that this “no way in hell” proclamation about The Descendants or Moneyball “is precisely why I loathe and despise the industry criteria that everyone associates with a Best Picture Oscar win.

“People want the ‘big thing,’ the lump in the throat that pulverizes, the movie that delivers some profound bedrock truth about our common experience, that makes you want to hug your father or your daughter….and if I ever get to the point that a movie like War Horse (if it follows through on the indicatoions of the trailer and the ads) or The Artist or The Help makes me feel that way, then take me out behind the building and shoot me in the head, twice.”

Somebody says this is an antiquated definition of a Best Picture Oscar winner, and I respond that “i didn’t say people won’t settle for this, that or the other thing when it’s Crunch Decision Time. Obviously they went for something less or different or more granular with The King’s Speech, The Departed, Chicago, No Country For Old Men, The Hurt Locker. But they’re always looking for the “big thing” element at the outset. They always want that comfort, that assurance, that meltdown, that touch of a quaalude high.

And then I add that “when Gabe The Playlist begrudgingly said there ‘wasn’t a dry eye in the house’ toward the end of a recent NY screening of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, I felt a little button-push sensation in my chest. I thinking it might be the one….maybe. He said he’s not a Stephen Daldry or a Sandra Bullock fan and that he didn’t care for the Asperger’s kid, but he still recognized or acknowledged that it delivers the emotional payoff that it set out to deliver. That impressed me.”

And then another guy points out another factor in Extremely Close‘s favor is that the Academy “truly loves Daldry. He’s the only director who has been nominated for every single feature film he’s directed to date.” So it’s looking like Extremely Loud might have an edge at this stage…maybe, sorta kinda, bullshit-wise.

Today’s activities include a small noon lunch thrown by my Savannah Film Festival hosts (which I’m late for as we speak) and some writing/filing this afternoon along with a little bike-riding around the city. There’s some kind of street party this evening along with a screening of The Artist. Maybe James Toback (who’s doing a q & a with Alec Baldwin tomorrow afternoon) will fly in today or tonight, and we can do a little carousing.

Thanks to the Savannah Film Festival and the Marshall House for allowing me to stay in rom #314 (i.e, the one with the desk, pictured last night) and not sending me back to the broom closet.

Breakfast/lunch atrium inside the Marshall House.

Featured in the current print issue of Esquire, but not, apparently, in the online edtion.

Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone is arriving at the Savannah Film Festival tomorrow. She told me a day or two ago that she heard it might be “cold.” (When women say “cold,” they mean cool, brisk, sweater weather, etc.) Well, I got here about two hours ago and it’s almost like Palm Beach — it’s T-shirt weather, a bit warmer than Los Angeles.

Savannah College of Art and Design theatre on Broughton Street, Savannah — 10.28, 10:05 pm.

I arrived at the Marshall House, the festival’s nerve center, around 9:15 or so, and right away I got into it with the staff about my midget-sized room, but that issue’s resolved now…or at least for the time being.

They tried to put me in a room the size of janitor’s closet. “Fellas, I have to have a desk and a chair,” I said. “That’s why the festival brought me here. To write and file and run photos of the festival from my computer, so I really do need a desk. Really.” It took a little time to get this point across (they hemmed, they hawed, they side-stepped), but they finally relented and gave me a room with a desk. Thank you.

Marshall House, 123 East Broughton Street, Savannah.

Houston airport during the three-hour wait for the Houston-to-Svannah plane — 10.28, 6:25 pm.

HE’s Continental Airlines prolonged agony day continues unabated. I sat in a munchkin-sized middle seat from LAX to Houston, next to a guy eating stinky barbecue Doritos. Awful. My first-class sensibilities don’t synch with flying coach or sitting next to riff-raff. Currently standing next to Gate B75 — “hellgate” — at Houston Airport. Charging phone. No wifi or wall outlets, of course. No massively obese people waiting for the flight, which is good. Flight is delayed 85 minutes and counting. At best I’ll check into Savannah’s Marshall House by 7:30 pm.

Yes, I always favor the earlier, black-and-white version. Whenever, whatever. But I’m also convinced in this instance that the dead-eyed expression on Robert Mitchum‘s face is somewhat scarier and more malignant than the one on Robert DeNiro‘s. Right now the 1962 Bluray version (which costars Gregory Peck in the 1991 Nick Nolte role) is available only from Amazon.co.uk.

Robert Mitchum as Max Cady in J. Lee Thompson’s Cape Fear (’62).

Robert DeNiro as Max Cady in Martin Scorsese’s’s Cape Fear (’91).

“Bloggers and the writers who turn out well-crafted pieces on their own websites are free to write what they want. The best of them, such as Dennis Cozzalio at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule or Kim Morgan at Sunset Gun or Farran Nehme Smith at The Self-Styled Siren, give public voice to the way movies function as private obsession.

“Their film knowledge is broad and deep, but they wear that knowledge lightly. They understand that the true appreciation of any art begins in pleasure (and not in the “work” of watching movies). To read them is to read people grounded in the sensual response to movies, in what the presence or look of a certain star, or the way a shot is lit stirs in them. Reading these writers, I often feel that I’m in the presence of people dedicated to the notion of collective cultural memory in an era when instant obsolescence is the rule.” — from a non-linkable Charles Taylor piece about film criticsm in the Fall 2011 issue of Dissent.

I love Morgan and Smith but who the hell is Cozzalio? I haven’t been to Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule once in my life. Not once. Before this evening, I mean.

I’ve just been told that Carey Mulligan, being interested in Hollywood Elsewhere in advance of our scheduled phone interview, read yesterday’s post about her evolving appearance (“Transformer“) since early ’09. And her feelings were hurt by some of the comments. And so she doesn’t feel safe appearing on HE, given this atmosphere, so the phone chat is a no-go.

I don’t blame her. I deleted a couple of the nastier ones yesterday (one by “my brain is melting“), but I guess I should have been more slash-and-burn about it. As soon as I was told the interview had been cancelled, I read all 40 comments that were sitting there as of 6:15 pm, and four, I have to admit, fit my definition of cruel or harsh or needlessly insensitive. I should have whacked them out last night. HE is a place for blunt opinion, but I don’t want it to be a forum for cruelty. (Unless we’re talking about hurting the feelings of certain bearded directors.)

So here’s an apology to Ms. Mulligan, and a pledge that I will be all the more vigilant about editing out any further cruel stuff. I’ve edited out four more comments — the offending authors are “Gabriel,” “Harry Warden,” “My Brain Is Melting,” “K. Bowen” and “Robert Cashill.” The authors are advised to show a little more sensitivity next time.

Today has been one of the slowest, most agonizing filing days in memory. With every post I’ve felt as if my arms and hands were covered in molasses and maple syrup on a cold day in February…physically and mentally drowned in the stuff, and with both of my computers (iMac and Macbook Pro) running slow and lumpy and requiring re-starts etc. I really give up. Two screenings to get to now. Back at it after 10 pm. Awful.

In a non-video jailhouse interview Bernard Madoff has told GMA’s Barbara Walters that he suffers nightmares and “terrible remorse” for having “ruined his family” but is “happier in prison” than he was on the outside.

“I feel safer here,” said Madoff. “I have people to talk to, no decisions to make. I know I will die in prison. I lived the last 20 years of my life in fear. Now I have no fear because I’m no longer in control.”

Walters explained that “the other prisoners treat him with great respect, especially the young ones, but they do this for all the wrong reasons. But he has a routine, and for the first time in his life he’s not afraid of being arrested.”

Q; What’s the difference between the existence that Madoff has now and the one that Ringo Starr describes in “Octopus’s Garden“? A: Madoff’s is on dry land.

And I dreamed I was dying

And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly

And looking back down at me

Smiled reassunngly

And I dreamed I was flying

And high up above my eyes could clearly see

The Statue of Liberty

Sailing away to sea

And I dreamed I was flying.

Here’s a thing I wrote in March 2009 about what Madoff could have done before he was pinched.