Jeffrey Wells

Last-chance Sundance screenings and the distraction of the Dowd-Anderson fisticuffs caused me to miss this Bagger video two days ago. N.Y. Times Oscar blogger and Sundance guy David Carr tries snowboarding with Woody Harrelson and falls four times. Backwards. Landing on packed snow.

N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis today posted a Sundance ’09 summation piece, in which she hugs Unmade Beds, Big Fan, Big River Man, In the Loop, Crude, Cold Souls and Lulu and Jimi.

And yet she makes no mention at all of Lone Scherfig‘s An Education . And I saw Manohla in line for this one! She obviously isn’t required to agree with me that it was far and away the best film of the festival, but to ignore it is… what’s the right word? Curious? Obstinate? Bewildering? Not mentioning a film that everyone has either praised or at least acknowledged as a huge festival favorite obviously implies a negative attitude.

But I love Dargis’s interpretation of Steven Soderbergh‘s The Girlfriend Experience, to wit: “Clearly far more interested in the metaphoric usage of flesh peddling than its impact on real bodies, Soderbergh turns prostitution into an allegory about moviemaking in which the whore is the filmmaker, her clients are the producers and the scum of the earth is — you guessed it — the critic who reviews her work (negatively).”

In an online chat earlier today between Washington Post columnist and film critic Ann Hornaday, a Virginia guy named “ArtMovieLover” voiced strong support for the hiring of the potentially pugilistic and hot-tempered John Anderson as a full-time Post critic.

Washington Post critic/columnist Ann Hornaday; two-fisted film critic John Anderson; Jeff “the Dude” Dowd.

“Now that your sometime colleague John Anderson has gone so far as to punch out Jeff ‘the Dude’ Dowd at Sundance over his endless advocacy for a documentary that Anderson didn’t care for, can the Post please hire Anderson full time?

“I know, I know. Such behavior is supposed to be seen as boorish and unprofessional, but frankly, I like it that Anderson doesn’t put up with endless lobbying over breakfast, even when coming from someone supposedly as laid back as ‘the Dude.’ Sock it to ’em, John! Let’s have your muscular prose at the Post full-time!”

Hornaday replies as follows: “You are too funny. I’m a believer in non-violence and never advocate physical aggression to solve problems. However, I also consider the breaking of bread a sacred act that should never, ever be desecrated. When someone’s eating, you back off, full stop. At Sundance, of course, you’re dealing with an environment of little sleep, a lot of stress, frayed nerves and inflamed passions. I understand John’s frustration, and I hope he and Jeff can find a way to come to terms.”

Caroline Kennedy was pretty awful with her shyness and sagging shoulders and “you knows” and whatnot. But New York’s just-appointed U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand isn’t that great either. She has a kind of yappy suburban-soccer-mom voice, she speaks in banal bromides, she’s short and she looks like the wife of a rural Austrian baker. I don’t feel any charisma, and I sense nothing in the way of intellectual force or serious Bella Abzug-styled backbone. And she’s clearly proud of her 100 rating from the NRA.

Moderately funny, but goes on too long. Good newscaster and politican “gets.” Good naked Jack Black. But the music is fucking awful. And…wait, was that Joseph Gordon Levitt?

For several months I’ve been suppressing a thought about MSNBC’s Chuck Todd out of a fear of sounding banal and superficial, but — I think Andy Warhol would back me up here — the only thing lamer than saying something shallow is being afraid to sound shallow. So here goes. It’s real, it’s happening, and it can’t be ignored any longer.

Todd is only 36 years old, and his hairline is in serious trouble. As a TV reporter and the chief White House correspondent for NBC and MSNBC, Todd really doesn’t want to be a baldie — I know he doesn’t want to put out that metaphor — so he does need to do deal with it, Joe Biden-style, before it’s too late. The remedies are simple and affordable.

The financial woes that KO’ed Rod Lurie‘s Nothing But The Truth last month were briefly forgotten when this incontestably fine film, which I called “Lurie’s best, hands down” in my 8.18.08 review, was honored last night as the opening attraction at the 2009 Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Nothing But The Truth costar Noah Wyle, director-writer Rod Lurie at last night’s after-party in downtown Santa Barbara.

The Bob Yari Chapter 11 tragedy, announced on 12.13.08, turned Nothing But The Truth into an instant dead horse — no bookings, no ads, no nothin’.

I praised NBTT “because it’s feels smoother and crisper and more confidently dug into the soil than The Contender or Resurrecting The Champ or The Last Castle. It’s a growth-spurt thing, a movie that says, almost with a kind of shrug, ‘Okay, now I really know what I’m doing.’ And because each and every actor nails what they’ve been hired to do like the pros they are, and I don’t just mean the leads — Kate Beckinsale, Vera Farmiga, Alan Alda and Matt Dillon, all of whom hit triples and homers.

“I also mean costars Noah Wyle and David Schwimmer and even the homie-girl actresses who play Beckinsale’s cellmates when she goes to the pound for refusing to give up a source. I mean everyone up and down. Everybody delivers , nobody ‘acts.’

“Yes, I know and am friendly with Lurie, but I know good craft and good material when I see it, and I’m sure as hell not going to sit on what I know and feel because of a reverse-blowjob concern.”

Outside Santa Barbara’s State Street hotel — 1.23.09, 7:05 am.

Wetness from Hollywood Elsewhere on Vimeo.

Who wasn’t shocked at yesterday’s announcement about Stephen Daldry‘s The Reader being one of the Best Picture Oscar nominees? The Envelope ‘s Pete Hammond, for one.

In the wake of last week’s BAFTA announcement in which The Reader received several key noms including best picture, Hammond wrote that “this is the movie that has cropped up again and again in conversations I’ve had with academy members, not The Dark Knight.

“That decidedly unscientific survey has again proven to be right,” Hammond said yesterday. “My ‘group’ has in previous years pointed clearly to upset victories for My Cousin Vinnie‘s Marisa Tomei, Crash and Marion Cotillard winning for Best Actress. I’m getting on the phone with them right now to see who wins on Feb. 22. I’ll let you know.”

Art accompanying Oscar nomination piece posted earlier today by The Film Experience‘s Nathaniel R.

Based on the BBC mini-series of the same title, State of Play (Universal, 4.17) is “about a team of investigative reporters work alongside a police detective to try to solve the murder of a Washington congressman’s mistress.” Russell Crowe, Rachel McAdams, Ben Affleck and Helen Mirren costar. Screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan and Tony Gilroy; directed by Kevin Macdonald.

Posted 10 days ago by Joe Nicolosi. You could make a whole series of idiot synopsis summaries about dozens of classic films.

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.