Jeffrey Wells

The N.Y. Times‘ Sarah Lyall is reporting about the making of producer Joel Silver and director Guy Ritchie ‘s Sherlock Holmes (Warner Bros., 11.13), a big-budget effort aimed at the knuckle-dragging popcorn-munchers who don’t know from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Basil Rathbone or Billy Wilder‘s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes or Herbert Ross‘s The Seven Per Cent Solution or any of those other 20th Century, pre-iPhone elements.

We’re basically talking about a digitized Indiana Holmes and the Temple of Doom times ten with brilliant powers of deduction and totally hot washboard abs. A kick-boxing, James Bondian Holmes played by Robert Downey, Jr., and Jude Law — Jude Law! — as Dr. Watson. And, I guess, no cocaine addiction.

This is surely evidence of a degraded culture — the animalization of rarified values and dashing cerebral derring-do, which were once admired or at least found intriguing by average moviegoers. You know that if everyone had my taste in films Silver, Ritchie and Warner Bros. wouldn’t dare make something like this. Will their Holmes be successful? Probably. What would this say about the state of under-30 sophistication? Don’t ask.

23 years ago Steven Spielberg and Barry Levinson ‘s Young Sherlock Holmes pulled the same horseshit — i.e., use the sellable Holmes name to make an action thriller with an extremely limited interest in the legend of the pipe-smoking Holmes (as well the genuine 19th Century London milieu in which the original character operated) but which would nonetheless sell tickets to the mid ’80s mongrel youth market.

Why even call the character Sherlock Holmes? Because doing so will make it easier to market with those who knows the Holmes name. But you know this movie began as a big-dick dice roll in which all the major participants figured out their fat salaries and profit participations, and that the “creativity” followed from there.

I think Silver and Warner Bros. let Lyall write this article in order to get the shock out of the way early. By the time Sherlock Holmes opens 10 months from now, everyone will be saying, “Yeah, yeah…it’s heretical, we know that. But is it any good?”

The Sherlock Holmes of Sherlock Holmes, Lyall writes, “will not be wearing a deerstalker hat. Nor will he be wearing an Inverness overcoat, the kind with the dashing cloak that hangs over the shoulders as extra protection against the English rain.”

No, no…mistake! Because if Downey is wearing an Inverness overcoat, he can leap from the top of of a seven-story London apartment building and soar over the city like Batman, using the cloak as a kind of aeronautical flotation device.

At yesterday’s screenwriter’s panel at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, moderator Anne Thompson asked Dustin Lance Black (Milk), Tom McCarthy (The Visitor), Robert Knott (The Appaloosa) and Andrew Stanton (Wall*E) about their writing process — when they write best, how they write best, etc.

Grand Jury Prize, U.S. Dramatic and Audience Award, Dramatic:: Push: Based on a novel by Sapphire, d: Lee Daniels. HE comment: Didn’t choose to see it during Sundance because I didn’t care for Daniels’ Shadowboxer (’05). I’ll see it down the road, but I’m from Missouri. Mordbid obesity is not an affliction in the sense of being hit by a disease or having a tree fall on you. It’s a choice.

Grand Jury Prize, U.S. Documentary: We Live In Public, d: Ondi Timoner. Provocative and probably prophetic doc about how online obsession can (and did, in the case of internet pioneer Josh Harris ) about where most of us who live online are headed. Unflinchingly delves into Harris’s neurotic-obsessive head. I’m not sure how attractive or engrossing this will seem to Mr. and Mrs. Joe Computer Nerd.

World Cinema Jury Prize, Dramatic: The Maid, d: Sebastian Silva.

World Cinema Jury Prize, Documentary: Rough Aunties, d: Kim Longinotto.

Audience Award, Documentary: The Cove, d: Louise Psihoyos.

World Cinema Audience Award, Dramatic: An Education, d: Lone Scherfig-

World Cinema Audience Award, Documentary: Afghan Star, d: Havana Marking.

Excellence in Directing, U.S. Dramatic: Sin Nombre, d: Cary Joji Fukunaga.

I’m bored. That’s it. Here’s the Variety link for the rest.

Taken following this afternoon’s screenwriter’s panel at Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theatre. Moderated by Variety‘s Anne Thompson, the guests were Dustin Lance Black (Milk), Tom McCarthy (The Visitor), Robert Knott (The Appaloosa) and Andrew Stanton (Wall*E).

Dustin Lance Black

Tom McCarthy

I have commentary to share plus a video clip to show, but I have to get to another event. I might put them up later tonight; more likely early tomorrow.

In today’s report about the apparent death of the Seth Rogen Green Hornet project, Hitfix’s Drew McWeeny declines to answer or even ask “why,” even on a speculative basis.

All he says, boiled down, is that The Green Hornet “has gone onto life-support at Sony” and that there’s “a good chance the studio’s going to kick the plug out any moment now.”

I don’t know diddly squat but I can speculate on a reason. The screenplay of The Green Hornet, written by the unequivocally smart-ass, comedically inclined Rogen and Evan Goldberg, never found the right balance between the demands of a geek-friendly superhero flick (which always includes a serious-sincere current of geek emotion) and the humor element that these two guys live for and what their careers are based upon.

This may not be why the Hornet movie is all but dead, but at least it’s something to kick around.

“Ever since Stephen Chow started to waffle about his participation in the film, I’ve been hearing rumors that there were major hesitations at Sony,” McWeeney writes. “Then at Sundance, I heard several people say that the film was off completely. I spoke this afternoon with a source close to the film, and while they didn’t call it completely dead, they did say it is ‘highly unlikely’ that the film will shoot in 2009 at all.”

“Underworld…vampires, Bill Nighy, naah. Hotel for Dogs…great title, kids movie, naah. Already seen The Wrestler, good downer flick, hope Mickey wins. Mall Cop is a slob comedy…nope. Didn’t I read somewhere that Dustin Hoffman gives his best performance in Harvey since…I don’t know, a really long time? S’matter? You just wanna eat something? Sure? Fine.”

I have a solution for the obviously flawed Academy Awards’ nomination process. We all know the line about what an honor it is to be nominated by your peers, but we also know that the motives and taste buds of a certain sector of the Academy — i.e., the sentimentalists, the cheap-seaters, the over-the-hill gang — have resulted in various embarassments.

The geezer-homophobia bloc that took down Brokeback Mountain is the most infamous example. Two current manifestations are the Best Actor nominating of Brad Pitt for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and the Best Actress nomination-snubbing of Happy-Go-Lucky‘s Sally Hawkins.

One way to fix this would be to monitor and, when necessary, disenfranchise those Academy members who’ve proven repeatedly to have exhibited bad or atrocious taste, but that would just provoke a rebellion from defenders of the over-70 set and everyone asking what’s “bad taste?” and shouts of “no elitism!”

A more practical and political solution would be to create a board of elite taste-filter types — a revolving team of accomplished industry veterans who “know better” by virtue of being in the game and currently productive. These people would have ultimate deciding power over nominations and winners.

The concept of elite taste filter boards is not new. Similar thinking led to the creation of the Electoral College in the late 18th Century and last year to the creation of Mark Johnson‘s elite Foreign Language Film board that gives them trump power over the ninnies who refused to short-list 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.

This elite group could, when the situation warrants, dismiss and counter-act certain bad-taste nominations when they go too far. To me this makes sense. The rank-and-file can’t be and shouldn’t be trusted to do the right thing. They will always do the wrong thing and sometimes make decisions that result in gravy stains upon the Academy’s reputation. One-man, one-vote democracy is a shaky enough system in the political arena, but it can’t work when it comes to recognizing and voting for serious artistic achievement.

HE reader Richard Huffman finds it very odd, as I do, that the Academy denied Happy-Go-Lucky‘s Sally Hawkins a Best Actress nomination. You’d think someone who won a Best Actress trophy last month from the Los Angeles and New York film critics as well as a Best Comedy/Muscial actress Golden Globe award would have at least warranted a nomination, for heaven’s sake. But no — not even that.

What happened?

“I’ve only scanned the awards of the last eight years, but every single winner of Best Actress in a Drama, or in a Musical/Comedy at the Golden Globes has been guaranteed an Oscar nod until this year,” Hufman says. “Renee Zellwegger won a Musical/Comedy Golden Globe in ’01 for Nurse Betty but didn’t prevail with the Academy; ditto for Madonna in ’97 — Comedy/Musical Golden Globe for her performance in Evita, but zip from the Academy.”

The difference is that Hawkins’s Happy-Go-Lucky performance was (no offense to Zellweger or Madonna) of a much higher calibre. The NYFCC and LAFCA Best Actress awards speak to that; ditto the Silver Bear she won in Berlin, the Best Actress award from the Boston Society of Film Critics and Satellite Award for Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical.

The only theory I can figure is that Academy voters mainly vote for primary-color performances in bigger budget mainstream films, but will sometimes, out of the goodness in their hearts, vote for one quirky, oddball, indie-ish performance out of the five. The actress who took this year’s indie nomination was Frozen River‘s Melissa Leo, so that left Hawkins out.

Hawkins should have taken the Angelina Jolie/Changeling slot. I’m sure I’m not the only one who suspects that Jolie (who, don;t mistake, gave a strong and respectable performance in Clint Eastwood‘s period film) was nominated for her marquee value.

“He was just a very smooth, cool, laidback dancer. He was just like a normal person,” Victoria Lucas, 14, told People‘s Sandra Sobieraj Westfall and Stephen M. Silverman three or four days ago. “I said to him, ‘Let’s start the Bump,’ and he was like, ‘Well, okay!’ It was the only dance move I knew that was good for TV. We both had the basic movement going on and it just sort of fell into place. He’s just an all-American good dancer. I hope I find a boy like that!”

I completely agree about Ted Chung‘s A Thousand Words, a five-minute dialogue-free short that was posted on Vimeo four days ago. It’s an elegant, concise and very affecting portrait of big-city loneliness and little instant connections that go “ping” and are gone seconds later. The emotions are halting, delicate, true. Beautiful piano score.

A Thousand Words from Ted Chung on Vimeo.

The HE reader who sent it along (i.e., “Paisley Merriweather”) is calling it an “absolutely phenomenal” short “that blows away any of the shorts shown at Sundance this year. Chung, working with no resources, could be the next Cuaron or Soderbergh.” The short is starting to blow up all across the web — over 7,000 views in 3 days.

Yesterday Variety‘s Todd McCarthy posted a wrap-up piece called “Sundance synchs with the times — Education, Push emblematic of Obama age.”

Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow‘s Dirt! The Movie is a straightforward tutorial movie that reminds us of the importance of keeping in touch with basic organic elements, and explains in numerous ways how it’s a profound mistake to live a 100% synthetic lifestyle, which applies to everyone who doesn’t work outdoors or isn’t dirt poor. It’s not all that clever or penetrating, frankly, but Dirt! is focusing on a critical quality-of-life issue that we need to pay attention to. As in urgently, muy importante, do-or-die, etc.

I’m referring to the fact that tens of millions of us, perhaps hundreds of millions of us, live like WALL*E tele-tubbies, and that choosing to exist this way is definitely hastening the end of the planet because it’s messing with the natural way of things as well as sedating our souls.

Inspired by William Bryant Logan‘s Dirt, the Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, pic “employs a colorful combination of animation, vignettes, and personal accounts from farmers, physicists, church leaders, children, wine critics, anthropologists, and activists to learn about dirt — where it comes from, how we regard (or disregard) it, how it sustains us, the way it has become endangered, and what we can do about it,” etc. Yes — the Sundance program notes make it sound a bit humdrum.

But it’s not boring. It wasn’t for me, at least. It’s moderately interesting. That said, I didn’t find it particularly arousing. I would never get into a fight over this movie, I can tell you that.

Dirt! The Movie reminded me of a Los Angeles aroma experience that happened in ’80. I had flown out from Manhattan to do some set stories, and I remember as I stepped onto the portable metal staircase (which airlines used occasionally back then) and walked down the steps and across the LAX tarmac that a delightful aroma filled my nostrils. It was partly the dry, half-sandy L.A. terra firma — a mixture of earth, gravel and beach sand — mixed in with the scent of grass and scrub brush growing on the nearby hills. I could also detect a faint whiff of sea air along with the scent of tar and concrete and gasoline.

Accustomed as I was to the stink of New York, it reminded me that L.A. was a city with a little organic unruliness — a place in which nature’s rough and tumble still existed in the margins. No longer, of course. In the 28 or 29 years since that tarmac moment, the last remnants of organic L.A. have been pretty much paved over and forgotten about. (Except in the hill areas and on the coast.) I’m 100% sure this same effect has manifested in every urban area in every corner of the world.

I remember the smell of earth from my time as a young kid. I used to play in it all day long on weekends and during the summers. It’s a pretty horrible thing to realize that earth aromas are not just being eradicated, but in all likelihood have been eradicated now and forever.