Jeffrey Wells

“Just a quick note of thanks for steering me in the direction of Revolutionary Road,” HE reader James Kent wrote this morning. “My wife and I had a baby this year and haven’t been able to get out to movies with the usual zeal. But I caught up with Revolutionary Road this weekend and really loved it. The subject matter cuts very close to the bone for some, which is probably why it didn’t make it into the Oscar fray. But two things absolutely blew my mind — Roger Deakins‘ cinematography and the performance of Michael Shannon .

Michael Shannon in Revolutionary Road.

“I suspect if Heath Ledger‘s Dark Knight performance wasn’t a Best Supporting Actor slam-dunker that Shannon would be your surprise winner. I can see the words of his character on the page and there is such a typical cliched way it could have been played. I picture the almost catatonic psych ward patient who mumbles awkwardly at the table, but speaks inappropriate truths at the two dinner meetings like some form of idiot savant. But Shannon does something so unbelievable with that character that I’m gut positive that director Sam Mendes didn’t know what hit him.

“What Shannon delivers is what a supporting performance should be all about. There was a time when the academy used to recognize the supporting performance for what it was — a couple of key scenes that add power to the story, but lately the supporting awards have gone to the next good performance who has nearly as much screen time as the leads. I’m glad to see this year the academy recognized Shannon and Viola Davis for their key supporting contributions.

“And by the way, Leonardo DiCaprio was robbed. Man, was he good in this film! Winslet too, but I somehow felt she was miscast — didn’t look right to me. I felt the other female characters somehow belonged in that time period, but Winslet somehow didn’t. But that doesn’t diminish her knockout performance for a second. Michael Shannon though–you were right on with this guy. He’s a revelation.”

Can’t watch this Zodiac “Director’s Cut” Blu-ray until I’m back in New Jersey on Sunday — had to buy it today anyway. I’m convinced that all serious Zodiac heads have been having problems with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button . (I know, being one myself.) It’s like the real David Fincher directed Zodiac and a pod replicant — a Fincher duplicate who’s missing something fundamental — took over and directed Button.

I’m just trying to get as close as I can to that enormous satisfaction I felt when I saw a needle-perfect digital projection of Zodiac at the big Paramount theatre on the lot. I’ve never seen any digitally-shot feature look quite so magnificent.

Ben Brantley‘s 1.26 pan of the just-opened Hedda Gabler is a corker. The spirit was truly with him when he wrote it. “Ian Rickson, who this season delivered a nigh-perfect Seagull on Broadway, one of the best revivals I have ever, ever seen, is now responsible — oh, break, break my heart — for one of the worst revivals I have ever, ever seen. It’s not just that everyone is bad in this Hedda — it’s that they’re all bad in their own, different ways.

“Could it be that this production has fallen under the spell of Twilight, the hit movie from fall about the price of loving for teenage vampires? I mean, think about it. The forever fresh-faced Mary Louise Parker, one of our most delightful actresses, has traded in her usual air of easy, quirky spontaneity for the robotic petulance of an I-hate-everybody adolescent in a yearlong sulk. With her hair darkened, her face ghostly pale and her frame skeletal thin, her Hedda brings to mind a valley girl who’s given up cheerleading to be a goth because it’s way cooler and it matches the place her mind’s at now.”

What agent in his/her right mind would put his/her actor client into a lowball Bonnie and Clyde movie — an effort sure to be either ignored or urinated upon — under a director whose last effort was a “family” flick starring Lee Majors?

Once costars Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are no longer conjugal. “Too bad,” Jett wrote an hour ago. “Not that I’m surprised. Age difference killed it.” Hansard is 38, Irglova is 20. 18 years can seem like a fairly big gap from the vantage point of the younger person. Gaps diminish once you get older, of course. A 30 year woman with a 48 year-old guy is a bit strange, but only a bit. A 40 year-old woman and a 58 year-old guy…who cares?

When I was in my early 20s I used to regard people who were 30-plus as somehow soiled and lacking in spiritual buoyancy. On the other hand I used to worship the idea of women in their mid 30s, and I finally got down with one — a 37 year-old divorcee — when I was 22 or 23. It was heavenly in a sensual milkshake sense, but she wasn’t as interested in the present and future tense as I was — she was settled into her child-less suburban home, drank too much scotch, thought too much about her lost youth and opportunities. She was Maggie May.

I saw Danny Boyle‘s Slumdog Millionaire for the second time last night at Santa Barbara’s Lobero theatre. It didn’t improve or diminish. It’s still a scruffy, extreme-cinema poverty-tour Dickens fable — vigorously well done for what it is. My impression of Mumbai hasn’t changed — i.e., that it’s populated by some of the nastiest and cruelest people on the planet. And I’m still bothered by Dev Patel‘s halting, deer-in-the-headlights response to anything and everything that arouses, challenges or threatens his Jamal character.

Boyle Durling from Hollywood Elsewhere on Vimeo.

Boyle came out afterwards and did a 30-minute chat with SBFF director Roger Durling. As an theatre-of-life observer and raconteur, Boyle is a complete pleasure. He’s one of the most fully alive filmmakers I’ve ever sat with. (We did a 20-minute video interview in Toronto.) I could listen to him for hours. He knows everyone and everything. Durling asked the right kind of questions — i.e., very general — and just stood back and let Doyle go to town.

For me, European TV commercials have always been the Holy Grail. This one’s dead perfect, and far more effective than this said-to-be-sexy PETA vegetable ad (rejected for Super Bowl airing) that is obvious, metallic and way too pushy.

Ice Cream from Hollywood Elsewhere on Vimeo

Lee Daniel‘s Push** won enough respect and rave notices at the Sundance Film Festival to be on everyone’s must-see list when it eventually arrives in theatres. Well and good. But I was unaware until today of the other Push (Summit, 2.6.09) — a seemingly low-rent sci-fi actioner.

The website for this Paul McGuigan-directed programmer tells me it’s not likely to be loved or remembered for very long. But I wonder which Push decided on its title first. It’s just weird for two of them to punch through (McGuigan’s is screening for the press in early February) in the space of a couple of weeks.

** The full title of Daniel’s film is Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire.

Sharon Waxman‘s The Wrap, a new entertainment website, has been up and running for a few days now. Waxman is a sharp, go-getter reporter and a solid writer, but the site is…well, it’s fine. But it needs time to find itself. All websites do. It takes months, usually. Whatever you think a site is going to be when you start out, it always adapts and reconfigures.

Right now it seems a little familiar. Kinda Salon-y. A bit of a stripped-down Daily Beast thing going on. I don’t know. I know I could use some more sass and attitude and deep-dish stuff in my daily reading. Somebody who writes about Holywood from a high and confident perch, like Michael Wolff has written about Rupert Murdoch.

Defamer‘s Stu Van Airsdale is spitballing a scenario in which The Curious Case of Benjamin Button goes 0-for-13 on Oscar night. No way. It has to win for the CG face-pasting stuff.

People West Coast bureau chief Elizabeth Leonard has been demoted to senior writer, I’ve been told. I don’t know why they’ve slapped her down or what the corporate strategy is. I called a couple of staffers; nobody picked up. Leonard has been replaced by senior People staff writer J.D. Heyman, although not 100%. (Some of her bureau chief duties will be handled by other People staffers, apparently.) It’s a mess over there. Sooner or later all the Time, Inc. dead-tree publications are going to be remnants of their former selves — downsized, diminished, scrapped.

Dogs like this have the jaw-power to bite your hand off. But this guy’s a real sweetheart. He’s lost weight in recent months so he doesn’t seem as scary. He’s gentle, expressive, emotionally responsive. I’ll always be a Golden Retriever man but this guy’s all right.

Dog from Hollywood Elsewhere on Vimeo