Once costars Glenn Hansard and Marketa Irglova fell in love sometime in the summer of 2007, during a tour to promote the film. And now, roughly 15 or 16 months later, they’re toast. But they’re feigning a kind of serene acceptance of this melancholy fact (or so it seems to me) for the sake of promoting Strict Joy, which everyone is calling their “breakup album.”
Marketa Irglova, Glenn Hansard
And now N.Y. Times guy David Carr, in a very nicely but carefully written profile, has passed along their recent history (the success of Once and the Swell Season on top of the whole gettin’-over-it-and-movin’-on thing) and taken a measure of the album as a portrait of this.
Carr makes it clear which side he’s on when he describes Hansard as “a gifted, emotive frontman who sings as if he must, with a heart on his sleeve that is constantly throbbing” while calling Irglova “the embodiment of a harmonist, a supporting voice on the edge of the limelight whose feelings seem buried deep behind a smile of musical contentment.”
Are we following the drift? Guys almost never break things off unless they’ve fallen for someone else, and there’s no hint of that having happened with Hansard. To me, Irglova is almost certainly the one who snapped the branch. She’s the solo dancer, the decider, the disappointed party…or so I suspect.
I realize I’m just spewing hot air, of course, but with Irglova-Hansard declining to talk and Carr refusing to dig for the truth, what’s an interested party to do? Carr’s diplomatically deciding to let the ex-lovers slide is understandable from a certain perspective, but burying the blow-by-blow doesn’t feel right. What happened? Nobody detonates a two-year love affair and then smiles and says “everything’s cool” and “the show must go on” two or three months later like it’s so much spilt milk. Love is never that orderly or tame. There’s a serious love story here, and I for one would like to know what it is…or at least was.
My London adventure also diverted me from Pete Hammond‘s 10.14 “Notes on a Season” piece about Amelia, which asked whether Fox Searchlight has something to hide given the lack of screenings. The answer is that it doesn’t. Amelia isn’t just set in the 1930s but plays, apparently, like a film made with semi-schmaltzy 20th Century chops, which should be an allowable thing. And yet there’s a guarded feeling about it.
Hillary Swank in Mira Mair’s Amelia.
“There were two screenings on the Fox lot Oct. 7 that were projected digitally because film prints were not even ready yet,” ” Hammond reported. “It seems post-production came down to the wire on this one, with director Mira Nair putting the final touches on Gabriel Yared‘s (superb) music score in Paris just a week earlier.
“In reality the film has been a work in progress for some time. And in July a top studio exec very involved in the production told me somewhat ominously that they didn’t think the movie was ‘Academy,’ a statement that immediately put my expectations in check.
“That’s changed. Some added flashback sequences with the young Amelia give the story an emotional layer that apparently make a big difference for many who saw the earlier cuts. A studio source who finally saw the finished film for the first time told me his worst fears were not realized, saying, ‘I didn’t like it, I LOVED it.’ That newfound enthusiasm was shared by other staffers I ran into on the lot who had also just seen it.
“The fact is Amelia is a beautifully crafted and very traditional epic drama that’s aimed at an older, more discerning audience. That’s the kind of crowd that’s slow to show up at the multiplex, but if they do, they will be treated to the kind of fine adult biographical story movie studios generally just don’t seem to be making anymore.
“In some ways Amelia is reminiscent of Out Of Africa, which has the same combination of sweep, adventure and romance this film incorporates. Indeed, if this were 40, or even 20 years ago, Mira Nair‘s meticulously mounted effort would be deemed a front-runner for awards and a certain thing at the box office. But now we live in a post-Slumdog world, and the blueprint for a Best Picture is more likely to favor indie dramas like Precious than the old-style craft of an Amelia.
“So now, while its parent company is more concerned with the more obviously commercial Avatar and the Alvin and the Chipmunks Squeakquel, Searchlight must find a way to effectively sell the kind of faithful biopic that big Fox did so well in the, uh, 20th century.
“Searchlight is a studio used to nurturing quirky unexpected awards contenders like their Oscar babies, Slumdog Millionaire, Juno, The Wrestler and Little Miss Sunshine. With Amelia they suddenly find themselves with an old-fashioned, sweeping Hollywood biography that stars a two-time Academy Award-winning best actress, Hilary Swank (the first of those Oscars ironically came from another Searchlight underdog, “Boys Don’t Cry”).
“The strategy seems to be to let the picture open in about 700 screens and find its audience in the major markets before widening out. If it can hang in there, an Oscar campaign can follow where there would seem to be great potential in nominations at the very least for Stuart Dryburgh‘s stunning aerial cinematography, Yared’s gorgeous score and Swank’s right-on interpretation of Earhart. She definitely has the look and accent down pat (the real newsreel footage Nair incorporates prove that), but she’s even better in the quieter moments behind the controls of the plane — particularly in a suspenseful sequence toward the end where she and her navigator (expertly played by Christopher Eccleston) try to fly their way out of trouble.
“If ever there was a picture that should have great appeal to the older constituency that frequents these screenings, particularly the matinees, this will be the one.
“Whether Amelia even has a chance to fly into the expanded 10 Best Picture list based on box office, critical and Academy reaction is a question Oscar watchers will likely be answering before the end of the month.”
In a 10.16 N.Y. Timeseditorial observer piece called “Mad Men and the Thrill of Other People’s Misery in Sour Times,” Adam Cohen observes that AMC’s Mad Men is offering beleaguered Americans heaping helpings of other people’s misery…to a generation beaten down by skyrocketing unemployment, plunging retirement savings and mounting home foreclosures, Mad Men offers the schadenfreude-filled message that their predecessors were equally unhappy — and that the bleakness meter in American life has always been set on high.”
Producer Daniel Melnickdied last Tuesday, which was right in the middle of my Fantastic London sojourn. And then I kind of kicked it around in my head after returning to New York two days ago (i.e., Thursday). And then I remembered two or three phone conversations I had with Melnick in 1994, when he was 62.
They were all about the then-unfolding Heidi Fleiss Hollywood hooker scandal, which involved suspicions that certain actors and producers and studio execs had enjoyed Heidi’s girls with money siphoned or skimmed off production budgets. None of this was ever proven, but it sure was fun to nose and dig around. (I was reporting/filing at the time for Entertainment Weekly and doing stories for L.A. Times Sunday Calendar.) Melnick was known to be something of a ladies’ man (and perhaps one of those who’d sampled a Heidi girl from time to time…who knew?), and he agreed to talk to me, I presumed, with the idea of steering me away from this aspect.
Which isn’t to imply that Melnick had done anything “wrong” or icky. He just didn’t want to be mentioned in any Heidi stories being written, that’s all. No collateral stink to mess with his well-deserved reputation as a classy and sophisticated bon vivant.
In any case at one point I must have sounded too nosey during one of our conversations because Melnick suddenly arched his back and told me in stern stentorian tones that he wouldn’t tolerate any implications in the press that he had hound-dogged on the Heidi side of the fence. I immediately responded that it was against my religious beliefs to identify or admonish anyone for catting around per se, and that I was only interested in finding out if studio or production-budget funds had ever been (unofficially) used to pay for prostitutes. Melnick eventually calmed down but it was touch-and-go for a while.
Melnick always spoke like a smoothie — he had a warm, deepish, silky-toned voice — and in so doing seemed to fortify his rep as a man of the world who knew a little about everyone and everything.
Here’s a recollection from screenwriter/journalist John Eskow, who worked with Melnick on Air America.
Melnick produced the original 1971 Straw Dogs, and so his passing naturally affected Rod Lurie, the director-writer of the remake that recently wrapped in Shreveport, Louisiana. The news hit just as Lurie and crew were…okay, no spoilers but it was the last day of filming. During the original Dogs shoot Melnick was thought of “the Peckinpah wrangler,” Lurie informs.
Today is a half-moving day, hence my half-absence for the last several hours. The effort that goes into finding the right-sized, not-too-wide bookcase, and then finding the right delivery guy at the right place to meet me at the buying location in Queens (and everyone has their particular demands and schedules and fees)…something like this just vacuums up your day. But it has to be done.
Like so many trailers, this recently released one for Mira Nair‘s Amelia (Fox Searchlight, 10.23) seems to deliver a compressed version of the whole film (except for the last 10 or 15 minutes). Sitting here, having watched various versions for the last two or three months, I feel that I have seen it. There’s a screening early next week for people like me (i.e., late-to-the-table types).
“Most conspiracy theorists don’t understand this, but if there really were a C.I.A. plot [involving the assassination of President Kennedy], no documents would exist.” — Author Gerald Posner (“Case Closed”) speaking to N.Y. Times reporter Scott Shane in a 10.16 story about whether the Central Intelligence Agency might be “covering up some dark secret” about JFK’s murder? “Probably not,” Shane writes. “But you would not know it from the C.I.A.’s behavior.”
My London trip allowed me to see Tony Scott‘s The Taking of Pelham 123 twice — on the way over and the way back. And don’t laugh but I think it deserves to be one of the ten Best Picture nominees. The idea in nominating ten is to promote and celebrate a movie or two that guys like Scott Foundas and Dennis Lim don’t approve of, right? That Average Joes paid to see and actually enjoyed?
This is precisely the kind of shrewd, sharp-angled, deftly layered urban thriller that high-end Hollywood filmmakers like Scott are better at making than anyone else in the world. And I’m convinced after watching The Taking of Pelham 123 that it’s a damn near perfect film for what it is. The sucker never lags or falls into clicheville, it has a crafty plot with well-massaged characterization, it’s always psychologically complex or at least diverting, it delivers first-rate performances and just rocks out up and down.
And so somewhere over the Atlantic I began asking myself why a film as well-made and fully engaging as this one can’t be nominated for Best Picture? Because it’s a summer movie and summer movies don’t win awards? Of course they don’t, and of course this one can’t. The suggestion is to pop Pelham into the ranks of Best Picture contenders in order to round out the pack and toss a bone to the lowbrows and guilty-pleasure fixaters like myself.
What are the most likely ten Best Picture nominees at this stage? Up In The Air, Invictus, The Hurt Locker, An Education, Nine and A Serious Man. These are the six locks, in my view. Then you have Bright Star (maybe), Up (maybe but what’s the reason to lift it out of the Best Animated Feature category?), Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (probably but it’s so grim and dark, and isn’t it more of a performance film than a rock-solid cinematic achievement?), and possibly A Single Man.
I don’t think these last four are locks at all, and you can argue, I suppose, that A Serious Man might not be a given either. But any way you slice it there’s not a popcorn-muncher among these, and shouldn’t there be? At least one, I mean?
Early last June I wrote that The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is “an unquestionably better film — more rousing and flavorful, zippier and craftier — than the 1974 Joseph Sargent original. It’s a very satisfying summer-crime fuckall flick. A retread, yes, but with an attitude all its own…pow!
“Scott’s Pelham is first-rate crackerjack escapism because (a) it knows itself and is true to that, (b) it’s content to operate in its own realm (i.e., isn’t trying to top the chase sequences, effects and explosions in the last big urban actioner…it’s not playing that game) and (c) it’s just a solid all-around popcorn movie, full of focus and discipline.
“Scott exhibits the same precision and intelligent pizazz he used for Man on Fire and Crimson Tide. Is Pelham some kind of drop-to-your-knees golden fleece movie? No — just another urban slam-banger but smart, clever and muscle-car sweet.
“The New York subway-kidnap hostage thriller has more intricate plotting than the ’74 film, richer characterizations of the top MTA guy (Denzel Washington in the old Walter Matthau role) and top-dog hostage-taking badass (John Travolta in the Robert Shaw role) and a slew of supporting performances across the board that are much more vivid and interesting than those from the class of ’74, and at the same time less broad and farcical.
“Plus the Travolta and Washington characters are more psychologically layered; more work has put into their rationales and backstories. In hindsight Matthau’s performance seems humdrum and almost glib in comparison to Washington’s. And Travolta…my God, he’s a friggin’ madman in this thing! Fierce, irate, flying off the handle, lunging — his finest bad guy since the ‘ain’t it cool?’ guy in Broken Arrow.
“And James Gandolfini‘s New York Mayor isn’t the buffoon figure from the ’74 film — he’s playing a rationale, practical, somewhat full-of-shit politician, and he does so with an unforced attitude..
“The 2009 Pelham was made by a guy who understands and respects the original, and who sincerely wanted to make a better film — and he did! Integrating it very nicely and believably into a 2009 realm. And very grippingly and thrillingly. There’s no boredom to be had, and it never overcranks it. ”
This BBC story about the re-opening of the Pennan Inn in Pennan, Aberdeenshire took me back to Bill Fosyth’s Local Hero (’83). The inn is the one visited by Peter Reigert and run by Denis Lawson in this beloved film, which…good God, I can’t believe it’s been 26 years since I first saw it at the Warner Bros. screening room on 50th Street. Is there anyone who’s seen this poignant and bittersweet love story/fairy tale who hasn’t felt some kind of meltdown effect?
You can’t quite hear the ringing telephone inside the red booth on this YouTube clip (i.e., the very last shot in the film), but my eyes moisten every time I watch it, even without having seen the entire film beforehand. (Although I’ve seen the film at least seven or eight times.) It plucks a chord that feels sad, serene and melancholy all at once.
The caller is Reigert’s MacIntyre, a Houston oil executive who arrives in Pennan (called Ferness in the film) near the beginning to negotiate an oil refinery land buy. But he becomes disengaged from the mission and starts to just feel the mystical Northern Scotland vibe for what it is, and what he is, being of pretended Scottish descent. (His Hungarian grandparents chose the last name arbitrarily.) He slowly falls in love with the place and the people, and is all but heartbroken when he’s forced to return to Houston.
We’re all on the other end of that ringing phone, looking to know and touch something more primal and lasting in our lives.
In an interview with Bloomberg’s Al Hunt, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D., West Virginia) said it’s Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid‘s call whether or not to include a public option in the Senate health care bill. So it could actually happen? Rockefeller warned that stripping the public option simply to win Sen. Olympia Snowe‘s vote will cause Democrats “to lose our leadership and our momentum.”
Spike Jonze‘s Where The Wild Things Are, in the view of N.Y. Times cricket Manohla Dargis, “startles and charms and delights largely because Jonze’s filmmaking exceeds anything he’s done in either of his inventive previous features, Being John Malkovich (’99) and Adaptation (’02). [Now] he has made a work of art that stands up to its source and, in some instances, surpasses it.
It’s a film “that often dazzles during its quietest moments, as when Max (Max Records) sets sail, and you intuit his pluck and will from the close-ups of him staring into the unknown. He looms large here, as we do inside our heads. But when the view abruptly shifts to an overhead shot, you see that the boat is simply a speck amid an overwhelming vastness. This is the human condition, in two eloquent images.”
