It was announced yesterday that Larysa Kondracki‘s The Whistleblower had won the Palm Springs Film Festival Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature. I missed it at last September’s Toronto Film Festival, and I hadn’t heard any particulars until today. Conspiracy thriller, American cop in Bosnia, human trafficking. Rachel Weisz, Vanessa Redgrave, Monica Bellucci and David Strathairn.
It’s not playing Sundance 2011, of course, but it will show later this month at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.
Greg Jacobs and John Siskel‘s Louder Than A Bomb, about a major youth poetry slam competition held annually in Chicago, received the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature.
So every time Andrew Garfield‘s Peter Parker has to drop everything and become Spider-Man, he has to remember to take the web-shooter device with him. And God forbid if the device malfunctions, as they all do sooner or later. MTV’s Josh Horowitzobtained confirmation last night from Spider-Man costar Emma Stone.
During his infrequent stints as the Golden Globe jokemeister/commentator, Ricky Gervais skirted the line between delightfully wicked and boorishly cruel. He went with the taboo-ignoring, see-how-far-you-can-go sensibility of a roast. Coarse, obviously, but he was only speaking to the way things are out there and the things we dare not say. And every so often we heard the crack of a slugger’s bat.
The richest jokes are always flecked with brutality. And Gervais kept the energy up — you have to give him that. But I wonder what happened backstage? After the monologue he didn’t hake the mike as often as you might expect. Was that a simple time-clock issue or…?
I think he went as far as he did because of Mike Russell’s lawsuit. We’ve always known about the HFPA’s character, but Russell’s charges were bannered in trade headlines only two or three days ago, and for Gervais, I’m guessing, this required a commensurate response. He probably figured if he didn’t tear down the temple walls his comedian credibility would be sullied. The radical part was Gervais’ decision that once the floodgates were open in terms of HFPA material, he might as well thrown caution to the wind all around.
He was reflecting, I think, the sensibility of 2011 celebrity culture as much as the material used by Oscar emcee Bob Hope in the ’50s and early ’60s reflected the undercurrents and boundaries of that world.
“The jokes might have been more daring than funny, but the risk felt exhilarating because Gervais wasn’t being outrageous for its own sake. He was targeting the hypocrisy of Hollywood and the inanity and self-importance of awards themselves. The idea of rewarding excellence in film and TV is a crazy, politicized business, which makes these awards shows full of smoke-and-mirrors pretense. It’s as if no one is meant to notice the Wizard behind the curtain, orchestrating the big-money campaigns, and Gervais’ specialty is pulling that curtain back.”
“The general idea, naturally, would be to convey awe, delight and enthusiasm, and not, you know, come off like any kind of, you know, pooper. Opposite of that. Gotta be into it. But at the same time…how to say this?…you don’t want to oversaturate by using the same term too often. Perhaps if you got out a note pad and…I dunno, wrote down as many enthusiasm exclamations as you can think of? Ones you’re comfortable with, of course.”
Golden Globe summary: After all the heavy campaigning and two awards ceremonies over the last couple of nights, it would feel more correct and fitting if the Oscars were to happen earlier than February 27th. Wouldn’t it? Isn’t it all pretty much over? Is there a sentiment shift yet to come? Doubt it. And yet we’re looking at another six weeks. I don’t want to screw up the Santa Barbara Film Festival timetable, but…well, the Academy needs a re-think. Really.
10:55 pm: The clapping, cheering and love for Michael Douglas is obviously the warmest moment of the evening. “There’s gotta be an easier way to get a standing ovation,” he quips. And the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Drama goes to The Social Network. Dave Karger, Anne Thompson, Peter Howell, David Poland and other errant Gurus…you need to take a long walk or a long drive or a long hot bath and, like, re-assess. Okay, don’t. It’s still an open contest!
10:47 pm: Colin Firth wins again for Best Actor for his performace in The King’s Speech. Locked down and Oscar-secured, as it has been for weeks.
10:46 pm: “Poor people are gross and they smell bad.” — quote attibuted to Sandra Bullock by Ricky Gervais.
10:38 pm: Tom Hanks and Tim Allen presenting the Best Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical award, and the winner — good one — is The Kids Are All Right. Even if it’s not “comedic.” Throwing in natural sprinklings of humor into a relationship-family piece doesn’t make it so. Congrats nonethless to director-cowriter Lisa Cholodenko. Oh, and to producer Celine Rattray, who looks dazzling in her white gown and her Turks and Caicos tan.
10:34 pm: Natalie Portman wins, naturally, the Best Actress award for Black Swan. The HFPA really isn’t kidding around with this Critics Choice Awards 2 thing. Portman is so happy and beautiful, and is starting to look pleasantly and quite radiantly plump — obviously quite a contrast from her appearance in the film.
10:25 pm: Barney’s Version‘s Paul Giamatti wins for Best Comedy/Musical Actor. “People busted their asses to get [this movie] made…I had three wives, a trifecta of hotties, and I got to smoke and drink and got paid for it.”
10:20 pm: How many people are on stage to accept the Glee award for Best Comedy /Musical TV Series award? 18? 19?
10:14 pm: Time for David…I mean, the Best Director, Motion Picture award. And the Golden Globe goes to David Fincher for The Social Network. “Popping for pizza like chiclets?” Oh, sorry…”popping propecia like chiclets.” My idea of a gracious, relaxed and settled-down speech. “I’m personally loathe to respond to the praise this film has received for fear of becoming addicted to it,” he says. I hear that.
10:02 pm: A Robert De Niro tribute. Forget all the crap he’s done over the last decade because he was really great in the ’70s and…okay, part of the ’80s and definitely in 1990 in Goodfellas. And he was! Which is why everyone’s standing and whoo-whooing him right now. Thoroughly deserved. At the mike De Niro acknowledges that Little Fockers is shit. An amusing line about posing for pictures with the Hollywood Foreign Press, etc. He’s reading the whole thing off a teleprompter.
9:50 pm: The Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress award goes to The Fighter‘s Melissa Leo. This is the Critics Choice Awards…admit it! Congrats to Melissa. On her way to a perfect strike. She’s breathless, ecstatic…cool.
9:36 pm: The winner of the Golden Globe Best Foreign Language Film — “a category nobody in America cares about!,” says Gervais — is Susanne Bier‘s A Better World. Excellent call. Bier is genius-level — certainly one of the finest female directors working today.
9:27 pm: The Best Screenplay award naturally goes to The Social Network‘s Aaron Sorkin. “The people who watch movies are at least as smart as the people who make movies,” he says. (Really?) Kudos to Mark Zuckerberg, you turned out well, etc. Sure, fine.
9:13 pm: Al Pacino (soon to portray Phil Spector!) wins the Best Actor, TV Dramatic Film-or-whatever-it’s-called award for Barry Levinson and HBO’s You Don’t Know Jack. Good call. Wise. Pacino’s quietest performance since Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part II. Geoffrey Rush‘s head is shaved because…?
9:00 pm: Gervais: “Some of you know Robert Downey, Jr. from the Betty Ford Clinic and the Los Angeles County Jail.” Wait…what’s Downey doing? He’s pushing it. We’re all pushing it. This show is pushing it. (It has to. What else can it do?) Best Actress, Musical or Comedy and…yes! Annette Bening has her win…her moment. Intensely right-on. This is the end of the Bening awards parade but we’re okay with that. We love her, a great mom…cool.
8:55 pm: Justin Beiber is…what, three inches shorter than Hailee Steinfled? What is he, eight years old? Toy Story 3 wins for Best Animated Feature or whatever they’re calling it. Fine, richly deserved, thumbs up.
8:50 pm: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross winning the Best Original Score award for their work on The Social Network means that The King’s Speech is finished as far as winning the Best Motion Picture, Drama award. Right? An indicator, I mean. Dispute?
8:46 pm: Nobody cares about the Golden Globes choice of Best Original Song. Eff Best Original Song. Eff it up the bunghole! And the winner? “You Haven’t Seen The Last Of Me” from Burlesque! The trip to Vegas worked! The whores dropped to their knees and delivered!
8:37 pm: Boardwalk Empire wins the Golden Globe for Best TV Dramatic Series-or-whatever. 8:35 pm: Steve Buscemi wins the Best Supporting Actor in a TV Drama-or-Miniseries-or-whatever award for his tough-darts gangster guy in Boardwalk Empire. Down with that. Good show but honestly? I’ve only watched it twice. Is it okay if I promise to buy/rent/watch the DVD box set?
8:30 pm: “Eva Longoria has the daunting task of having to introduce the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press,” says Gervais. “Oooh!” says the audience. “That’s nothing!,” says Gervais. “I just had to haul him off the toilet and pop his teeth in!” Corrupt red-haired scumbag!
8:18: Julianne Moore and Kevin Spacey hand a Golden Globe for Best TV Movie or Miniseries or Whatever to Olivier Assayas‘ Carlos. Good call@ Taste buds! Shut up with the prompt music…show respect! These are Carlos guys!
8:06 pm: Scarlett Johnasson hands out the Best Supporting Actor award to Christian Bale for The Fighter. Naturally, sure, no surprise. Are the Globes going to be exactly like the Critics Choice Awards? We may as well face that possibility.
8:01 pm: Ricky Gervais starts off with a few Charlie Sheen jokes…thud. And then a Tourist joke – “It must be good because it’s nominated so shut up. The HFPA also accepted bribes.” And a Tom Cruise/John Travolta gay joke — “”Also not nominated was I Love You Philip Morris with Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor. Two heterosexual characters pretending to be gay. So the complete opposite of some famous Scientologists, then. My lawyers helped me with the wording of that joke.” And a Hugh Hefner fellatio joke. And a Lost joke — “the fat one ‘et them all.” And: “Here is beautiful, talented and Jewish…Mel Gibson told me that, he’s obsessed! — Scarlett Johansson!”
The Golden Globes will begin in 15 minutes, and two happenings may or may not make them a semi-noteworthy event (or at least, you know, something to talk about tomorrow): (a) Ricky Gervais‘s opening monologue and (b) The King’s Speech winning the Best Motion Picture, Drama…or not. That’s it — the whole show in a nutshell. Here are yesterday’s Gold Derby predictions.
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck did it, aided and abetted by Angelina Jolie. Florian was too mood-obsessed, too focused on style, too willing to flatter the big-star aura of Jolie and costar Johnny Depp. That’s the conclusion from The Daily Beast‘s Nicole Laporte about why The Tourist was such a stinker.
Von Donnersmarck “was not interested [in] a generic thriller,” an anonymous source tells LaPorte. “He was interested in making a movie that was about elegance and the glamour of stars. It was not supposed to be a hard-edged thriller. He wanted to make a style piece. That may have been a miscalculation.”
Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik‘s immediate reaction to last weekend’s Gabrielle Gifford shooting was that Tea Party rage had inflamed the atmosphere in Arizona and probably influenced unstable hinterland types like Jared Lee Loughner. “The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on this country is getting to be outrageous,” he said — a reasonable view from my perspective. And yet the right’s big-lie machine managed to discredit Dupnik’s view within 48 hours.
Their counter-attack, as always, was swift, focused, adamant, well-coordinated. “Who, us?,” they basically said. “The left is just as bad if not worse for charging that the furious, violence-implying, armed-militia tone of rightwing rhetoric since Obama’s inauguration had anything do with this nutter’s actions…how dare they suggest that we’re anything but blameless? We can inflame the political conversation as much as we want to with cries of ‘reload’ and references to Second Amendment solutions and crosshair symbols. That is our right as exceptional Americans!”
Truthout‘s Steve Strifflernoted two days ago that “we are now told that because [Loughner’s] political views do not fall seamlessly into a neat box labeled ‘left’ or ‘right’ that they were irrelevant for understanding events in Arizona and, by connection, for understanding the current political situation in the United States. [For] holding muddled political views does not in and of itself necessarily make Loughner mentally ill, unstable, crazy, or even particularly unusual. It makes him American and peculiarly so.”
The likelihood that Tuscon shooter Jared Lee Loughner “was…insane, with no coherent ideological agenda, does not mean that a climate of antigovernment hysteria has no effect on him or other crazed loners out there,” says N.Y Times columnist Frank Rich in today’s column. “Nor does Loughner’s insanity mitigate the surge in unhinged political zealots acting out over the last two years.
“President Obama said, correctly, on Wednesday that “a simple lack of civility” didn’t cause the Tucson tragedy. It didn’t cause these other incidents either. What did inform the earlier violence — including the vandalism at Giffords’s office — was an antigovernment radicalism as rabid on the right now as it was on the left in the late 1960s.
“A few unexpected voices have expressed alarm. After an antigovernment gunman struck at Washington’s Holocaust museum in June 2009, Shepard Smith of Fox News noted the rising vitriol in his e-mail traffic and warned on air that more ‘amped up’ Americans could be “getting the gun out.” The former Bush administration speechwriter David Frum took on the ‘reckless right’ that August, citing the incident at the Giffords Safeway event. But when a Department of Homeland Security report warned of far-right extremism and attacks by ‘lone wolves’ that same summer, Gingrich called it a smear and John Boehner demanded an apology.
“Last week a conservative presidential candidate, Tim Pawlenty, timidly said it wouldn’t be his ‘style’ to use Palin’s target map, but was savaged so viciously by his own camp that he immediately retreated. A senior Republican senator told Politico that he saw the Tucson bloodbath as a ‘cautionary tale’ for his party, yet refused to be named.
“What are they and their peers so afraid of? No doubt that someone might reload — the same fears that prompted Gabrielle Giffords to speak up, calmly but firmly, last March. Unless and until they can match her courage and speak out too, it’s hard to see what will change.”
The always electric and captivating Susannah York, 72, died earlier today from cancer. I fell in love with her performance as Meg, the daughter of Paul Scofield‘s Sir Thomas More, in Fred Zinneman‘s A Man For All Seasons (’66), and was pretty much hooked from then on. One of her best scenes in that film begins around the 2:20 mark.
York’s eyes were wonderful. Gleaming, teasing. They always knew. And then you add that delicious smile. She always conveyed adult intrigue, exceptional perception. At times a certain melancholy crept into her features, but it was always mitigated by hints of need, playful intelligence and, of course, erotic insinuation.
Born in 1939, York enjoyed an unusually long run — 18 years — in first-rate films of her day. The list began with Ronald Neame‘s Tunes of Glory (’60) and continued with John Huston‘s Freud (’62), Tony Richardson‘s Tom Jones (’63), A Man For All Seasons, Robert Aldrich‘s The Killing of Sister George (’68), Sydney Pollack‘s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (’69 — Best Supporting Actress nominated), Robert Altman‘s Images (’72 — Best Actress, Cannes Film Festival), Jerzy Skolimowski‘s The Shout, and — the end of the really good stuff — Daryl Duke‘s The Silent Partner (’78).
For some reason my two favorite York performances after A Man For All Seasons were in The Shout (a strong sexual current with Alan Bates , or so I recall) and — don’t laugh — Kaleidoscope with Warren Beatty.
I’m sorry she’s gone — 72 is far from elderly — but for actresses of York’s calibre quality of achievement is as important, perhaps more so, than the number of years spent on the planet.
At 3:30 am New York time Nikki Finkereported that Ron Howard‘s The Dilemma has, like, tanked. It did $6 million yesterday with a shot at $20 million by the end of the Martin Luther King holiday.
That’s “shockingly soft,” she says, if you compare to opening grosses of Vaughn’s Four Christmases ($31 million) and Couples Retreat ($34 million) and James’ Paul Blart: Mall Cop ($31 million) and Grown-Ups ($40 million).
Like I said on Thursday, it’s the movie and not the guys. People are smelling what this film is putting out and it’s not going down all that well — end of story.
Michel Gondry‘s The Green Hornet did around $10.5 million yesterday and is looking at $35 million by the end of the four-day weekend. That’s low, of course. The buzz is awful so what else could have happened?
Reactions to either?
Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan will take in just under $10 million by Monday night for an estimated cume of $73.8 million. How far can it go?
Watching my Ishtar Bluray the other night led me to Peter Biskind‘s September 2010 Vanity Fair piece about the making of that misbegotten (but now forgiven in most quarters) 1987 film. And while I’ve read Biskind’s Beatty autobiography and should have some memory of this, I came upon an anecdote that sank in because it contains — I’m not exaggerating — perhaps the most eloquent and half-touching rationale for promiscuity I’ve ever heard or considered. And conveyed in only four words.
Biskind got the story from Ishtar costar Dustin Hoffman.
“Despite his growing difficulties with [director Elaine] May, Beatty never complained about her — except once. He and Hoffman were in the desert, along with 150-odd extras. He took his co-star aside and started venting.
“‘Warren was going off about how painful it was to make this movie with Elaine,’ Hoffman recalls. ‘He said, ‘I was going to give this gift to Elaine, and it turned out to be the opposite. I tried this and I tried that…’ He was so passionate, but in the middle of it — it’s like he had eyes in the back of his head, because there was some girl walking by, maybe 50 yards away, in a djellaba. He turned and froze, just watched her. I mean, this was while he was producing and everything was going in the toilet. But he couldn’t help it.’
Finally, Beatty turned back to Hoffman and asked, ‘Where was I?’
“‘Warren, let me ask you something,’ Hoffman said. ‘Here everything is going wrong on this movie that you planned out to be a perfect experience for Elaine, and here’s a girl that you can’t even see a quarter of her face because of the djellaba — what is that about?”
“‘I don’t know.’
“‘Let me ask you something else. Theoretically, is there any woman on the planet that you would not make love to? If you had the chance?’
“‘That’s an interesting question: Is there any woman on the planet’ — Beatty paused and looked up at the sky — ‘that I wouldn’t make love to? Any woman at all?’
“Hoffman continues: ‘He repeated the question, because he took it very seriously. This problem with the production was now on the back burner, and it was like he was on Charlie Rose.’
“‘Yes, any woman,’ said Hoffman.
“‘That I wouldn’t … ?’ said Beatty. ‘No, there isn’t.’
“‘Theoretically, you would make love to any and every woman?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘You’re serious.’
“‘Yes.’
“‘Why?’
“‘Why?’
“Hoffman: ‘He was thinking. He was searching for the right words. ‘Because…you never know.’ I thought that was the most romantic thing I’d ever heard a man say, because he was talking about spirits uniting. And then it was ‘Where was I? I just don’t know what to do about Elaine…’ But this took precedence.’
“Hoffman was right,” Biskind concludes. “Beatty was searching for perfection. It was the same passion that fueled his prodigious appetite for takes: ‘because…you never know.'”
There are always little things that people do that faintly irritate others. So faintly that they barely register, and are certainly not worth mentioning in mixed company. To casually do so would suggest a petty and neurotic nature, and who wants that? But this is a Saturday morning and very little is going on. Remember Holden Caulfield sitting on that bus and noticing the way a guy is trying to hide that he’s picking his nose? We all think this stuff.
I inwardly flinch (i.e., not so you’d notice) whenever I see a cluster of eight or ten people standing or walking together. It’s ever-so-vaguely threatening and it invites a faint feeling of contempt. The herd instinct is one of the lowest imaginable behaviors, connoting fear and/or uncertainty and a general lack of Gary Cooper-like qualities. I’ve always rebelled, even when I was five, against the idea of huddling with any group, for any reason. I would huddle for warmth, I suppose, but that hasn’t happened yet and what are the odds at this stage?
I also don’t care for anyone who takes little baby sips out of a bottle of any liquid. I’m talking about raising a bottle for no more than a second and sipping maybe half a jigger’s worth of beer or Coke or whatever. I scowl ever so slightly when I see this. Actors always baby-sip, perhaps having been taught this in acting school. (Or because they don’t want to take 15 or 20 man-swigs should the director ask for that many takes.) I only know that it looks spazzy. If you’re going to sip something, do it like Bill Murray would, with a certain leisurely cool. Don’t be weird or herky-jerky. Tilt your head back and sip a little more slowly and allow a little more liquid — a healthy half-mouthful, say, or roughly two jiggers worth — to slide in and be savored. Now that I’ve written this it’s going to be all the harder to deal with baby-sippers.
