Jeffrey Wells

In this 12.30 posting, The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil and Village Voice columnist Michael Musto dish on the likely Best Actress nominees. These guys are great at this because they’re glib and superficial and perceptive and blunt (at times to the point of being merciless) — surrender one of these qualities and it all falls apart! — and because Musto’s droll downtown urbanity meshes well with O’Neil’s eager-beaverness.

“Meryl [Streep] is obviously a lock for her pinch-faced nun,” Muston begins, “and Rachel‘s Anne Hathaway is another lock as the sociopath who disrupts the wedding, whom I was rooting for. Being put into a mental asylum gets you a nomination so I think Angelina Jolie is getting in for Changeling. Mike Leigh ‘s women get nominated so I’m rooting for Sally Hawkins, who has a lot of momentum.

“Kristin Scott Thomas‘ understated performance is falling off, a lot of people haven’t seen the screener [of I’ve Loved You So Long], and the ending is a little cheesy….Kate Winslet is the new Deborah Kerr, let’s face it… she could get two nominations and still lose…New York magazine called it a masterwork, but people are going to turn against Revolutionary Road, ahd instead say ‘give her the nod for The Reader.’ And I’m afraid that the other gals — Melissa Leo, Michelle Williams — are going to fall through the cracks…Sally Hawkins is taking their quirky indie spot.”

And this one about the Gay Superbowl is good also….”Hugh Jackman is openly whatever.”

Double-checking on the vivid cowboy hat, making sure it’ll be there when I arrive in Park City, intending to wear it around town during Sundance, etc.

“A survey of sex therapists concluded the optimal amount of time for sexual intercourse was 3 to 13 minutes,” according to a 4.08 AP story by Megan K. Scott. “The findings, to be published in the May issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, strike at the notion that endurance is the key to a great sex life. If that sounds like good news to you, don’t cheer too loudly. The time does not count foreplay, and the therapists did rate sexual intercourse that lasts from 1 to 2 minutes as ‘too short.”

I wonder what the editors of the Journal of Sexual Medicine would have to say about Kate Winslet‘s two coupling scenes in Revolutionary Road — one with Leonardo DiCaprio, the other with costar David Harbour. My recollection is that neither man lasts longer than 15 or 20 seconds. We’re meant to understand, I think, that both have had their vitality sapped from living in arid suburbia. Or maybe director Sam Mendes just wanted these scenes over quickly.

It’s just a premise and a thin one at that, but this story from Poland contains the seed of a possibly interesting marital relationship movie. Americanized, I mean, but not in a dumb way. Have it be about some red-state redneck couple, perhaps, but as a straight drama. It begins at the brothel moment and then moves on from there. An economic downturn movie, I’m thinking. Maybe not. Maybe it’s a bad idea. But when I first read it, I perked up.

All These Wonderful Things blogger A.J. Schnack argues persuasively that James Marsh‘s Man on Wire should break free from its category (as many are suggesting WALL*E should rightfully do) and be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. Considering that it’s the best-reviewed film of the year and all.

A nice video-clip appreciation of Billy Wilder‘s amusing, ascerbic and finally compassionate The Apartment by N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott.

You think some journalists and columnists are mean and critical and dismissive of this or that actor or filmmaker? You should hear what the big-studio suits say about their interest in hiring some of them. A filmmaker friend I had dinner with the other night ran down a list of actors who would be a good choices to fill certain roles in a certain film that’s preparing to foll film in ’09, and one after another, he said, have been turned down by the studio guys. Mainly, he said, because their names don’t sell tickets overseas.

“Nope…don’t want him…fuck her…no way…somebody else….her last movie died…nobody likes him…he’s red ink,” etc.

I know the project in question and almost every one of of the rejected actors sounded like pretty good choices in terms of how they’d fit the part and how good they might be. Of course, it isn’t my job to worry about overseas grosses. But after hearing about this actor being rejected and that one being rejected and on and on and on, I said, “God, those studio guys are really friggin’ brutal about this stuff!” Journalists and critics might criticize this or that performance (or an aspect of one), but they’re not saying “no” about this or that actor being hired . Denying good paychecks to talented people — that’s cold.

Certain directors, also, aren’t able to put their movies together because actors don’t want to work with them because they’ve come to believe that these directors aren’t as interested as they could be in providing emotional, well-written roles and thereby serving the potential of the actors (i.e., making them look and sound their very best), and are much more interested in fulfilling their own visions and making their own stuff happen.

And yet the directors who are supposedly having trouble along these lines (two or three were discussed) are talented as hell and by my judgment have always tried to make rich, shaded, high-quality films. I don’t get it. I just know that making decisions about who to hire on movies is a much tougher racket than anything journalists could be a party to.

Lee Siegel, writing for the Wall Street Journal‘s real estate section, takes a poke at Hollywood’s long tradition of of claiming spiritual death by station wagon in a piece called “Why Does Hollywood Hate the Suburbs?”

Siegel basically thinks that the industry’s view of suburbs as sedate soul-killing gulags, advanced in such films as Revolutionary Road, The Ice Storm, Far From Heaven, The Stepford Wives (both versions), No Down Payment, Strangers When We Meet and American Beauty, is somehow undeserved and over-baked.

The piece leads you to conclude that Siegel either (a) never grew up in a suburb as a teenager or (b) is kowtowing to the Journal‘s advertising interests. I grew up in the suburbs and I’m telling you they’re hell for young guys who hunger for the real thing. They’re fine for kids and moms and older people who want peace and quiet and lots of trees and green lawns in the summertime. They offer good schools, of course, and the girls you meet in the richer suburbs (like the towns in Fairfield County, which is actually exurbia) tend to be a lot prettier than most because beauty follows money.

But I knew a few guys who felt that life was so nice in Wilton, Connecticut, and all the towns in that realm (Westport, New Canaan, Darien, Ridgefield, Weston, Easton, Redding) that they decided they probably couldn’t live as well and might live a lot worse if they went out into the world, so they decided to stick around and get local jobs, etc. And yes, some turned out okay (especially the ones who got into construction) but others didn’t do so well, succumbing to the usual maladies out of boredom or whatnot, in some cases curling into fetal balls and dying of spiritual malnutrition. Hell, I was almost one of them.

Here’s MCN’s Kim Voynar taking issue with Siegel’s piece also.

Tom Arnold is starring in this basketball-related CBS Interactive web series called Heckle-U, which will begin in February and run for ten episodes…fine. I met Arnold back in ’99 or ’00 at one of Jonathan Kaufer ‘s chinese-food-and-DVD parties, and I liked him right away for something that happened before we shook hands or said hello.

I had parked my car down the road and was approaching Kaufer’s home, which was located up in the hills inside this gated McMansion community, in the darkness. I saw a group of three or four people standing outside the black-iron gate. Usually you just push the intercom button and the owner buzzes you through and that’s that, but this group, which Arnold was a part of, was just standing around and murmuring to each other. (I had noticed them as I drove up so they’d been there a couple of minutes.) So I said out loud, not knowing who anyone was, “How come all you guys are just standing there?”

And Arnold replied in that unmistakable voice, “Because we’re assholes?”

In Leslie Bennett‘s Vanity Fair profile of Cate Blanchett, the actress talks about the Benjamin Button grim-reaper factor. Director David Fincher told her it would be “about death,” she says, “and I think that’s great.” And so do most of us, I believe. We alI think it’s pretty darn cool when a movie comes along and tries to get us to confront our mortality.

“We’ve enshrined the purity, sanctity, value, and importance of bringing children into the world,” says Blanchett, “[and] yet we don’t discuss death. There used to be an enshrined period where mourning was a necessary part of going through the process of grieving; death wasn’t considered morbid or antisocial. But that’s totally gone. Now we’re all terrified of aging, terrified of death. This film deals with death as a release. I hope it’s a moment of catharsis.”

“It’s sort of like a repository for your grief, about whatever you grieve about — the loss of loved ones, the missing of opportunities, whatever,” Fincher tells Bennetts,. “You hope it will leave people feeling hopeful about certain things, and sad about certain things.”

The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil is taken aback that Village Voice columnist Michael Musto doesn’t see Leonardo DiCaprio being Best Actor nominated for Revolutionary Road, especially since Leo was nominated the year before last for Blood Diamond “of all things…c’mon!” And Musto says Leo was better in Blood Diamond. No, he wasn’t. And he was nominated for that Ed Zwick film because he used a South African accent. That was it. That was the whole thing.