Jeffrey Wells

The decision of the Florida Film Critics to give Peter O’Toole a kiss-of-death, gold-watch, career achievement award is unfortunately symptomatic of the thinking out there, which is that O’Toole can’t win against Will Smith and/or Leonardo DiCaprio in the Best Actor competish, but let’s gather round and show our respect, etc. O’Toole’s decision to wait until mid-January to show up in Los Angeles probably sealed his fate. I wish it were otherwise and I’m genuinely sorry, realizing he’s been coping with forces beyond his control. All hail Becket!

Variety‘s Ian Mohr on the box-office implosion of Apocalypto following a surprisingly strong opening weekend. I love how Mohr sidesteps the matter of Apocalypto‘s Oscar-nom prospects (saying”it remains to be seen,” blah blah) when Mohr and everyone else knows full well that no one outside of the Latino community truly enjoyed Apocalypto, and that while some Academy mainstreamers may feel respect for Mel Gibson‘s visceral filmmaking chops, they’re strongly inclined to blow it off anyway (and we all know why), not to mention Gibson’s “sugartits” problem with women voters.

It’s good to read that Manhattan is marginally less dead than Los Angeles this week, since HE is heading back there this morning and staying through January 4th or 5th. Seeing the final version of Factory Girl, visiting the Bob Dylan exhibit at the Morgan Library, probably paying to see Rocky Balboa, etc.

With the news of the passing of former president Gerald Ford — in office for 896 days from 8.9.74 to 1.20.77 — my mind rewound the following clips/impressions: (a) Chevy Chase‘s falling-down routines on Saturday Night Live, (b) the dutiful apparatchik who pardoned Richard Nixon, (c) the way he looked totally wrecked and red-eyed the morning he conceded the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter; (d) Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme‘s apparent intent to shoot Ford in front of San Francisco’s Fairmount Hotel in ’75, (e) that N.Y. Daily News headline: “Ford to City: Drop Dead“, (f) Saying “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe” during a ’76 election debate with Carter; (g) his fascinating defense of the Warren Commission’s “magic bullet” theory and particularly his explanation that JFK fell back and to the left after being shot the second time because of “a neuromuscular reaction“; and (h) saying “I am a Ford, not a Lincoln.” Correction: It was Sara Jane Moore who tried shoot Ford (on 9.22.75) outside the St. Francis (not the Fairmount) hotel in San Francisco; “Squeaky” tried to shoot Ford in Sacramento 17 days earlier, on 9.5.75.

Salon‘s Stephanie Zacharek has compiled the most independent-minded Ten Best of ’06 list I’ve read anywhere. It’s so described because she’s included Marie-Antoinette (in some kind of royal tie with The Queen), Bryan Barber‘s Idlewild (not clever or crafty enough to be considered even an off-perverse choice), The Painted Veil (a tiresome dirge), The Notorious Bettie Page (scattershot), etc. Her choices are off the planet, but Zacharek deserves moxie points.

Richard Eyre‘s Notes on a Scandal (Fox Searchlight, 12.27) has done well enough by me, and it’s gotten a 79% Rotten Tomatoes positive and a 75% rating from Metacritic. But what’s really intriguing, I feel, is that at least one critic — the Hollywood Reporter‘s Kirk Honeycutt — thinks it’s misogynist (as does a columnist I know), and another — N.Y. Times‘ Manohla Dargis — feels it’s misanthropic. Good…this adds a certain something.
“Is this Judi’s film or Cate’s, Barbara’s or Sheba’s?” Dargis writes. “Barbara inspires shudders and may be off her rocker; Sheba is totally hot but also a sexual predator and, it emerges, rather stupid. Judi looks a fright, but that works to her actorly advantage as much as her marvelous enunciation. Cate slinks around, soaking up male and female attention with confidence. Of course both characters are utterly despicable, as is the story that invites us into its trap just to prove that we all have our self-serving reasons, including the filmmakers.”

N.Y. Times Oscar guy David Carr (a.k.a. “the Bagger”) “believes the movies that matter most are the ones being made right now. The Bagger has seen his share of crap, but he has also spent the past few days staring at films that take his breath away. In between shopping, gift-giving, and building fires that always seem to go out, the Bagger kept sneaking upstairs, away from the rellies, for a little him-time. Between screenings, screeners and premieres, he has seen stuff that left him confused, baffled and delighted.
“If last year√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s awards were a celebration of miniature wonders balanced on issues of moment, this year it√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s all about sprawling, glorious cinema. It is a tenet of the Royal Order of Oscar Ninnies that the movies in any given year weren√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t all that, that Hollywood and its indie outriders are constantly falling short artistically. But in truth, that√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s baloney. This award season is full of ambition, some realized, some not, that will make voting, or writing about voting, a complicated pleasure.”

By the time the Sundance Film Festival ends on 1.27.07, or perhaps before, a hooded Saddam Hussein will have been dropped through a trap door and suffered death from strangulation and a broken neck.

Where’s the data supporting Nikki Finke‘s reported assertion that the Dreamgirls audience is significantly expanding beyond the black/gays/hip urban demo? David Poland reported last night that Dreamgirls‘ opening-day gross (on 852 mostly urban-ish screens) was not $6 million (as Finke reported) but significantly over $8 million, second only to Night At The Museum, which was playing on nearly four times the number of screens — 3685.

“What Is It About Obama?” — a nicely reported, fairly-close-to- the-button L.A. TImes piece by Terry McDermott.

L.A. Times guy James Bates speaks to ThinkFilm’s Mark Urman about awards-season surge of Half-Nelson and Best Actor nominee Ryan Gosling: “There’s not a day that goes by when someone isn’t in a position to read about Half Nelson,” Urman says. “That wasn’t the case when it was in active theatrical release. Now, it’s part of the dialogue. On the January- February cusp, when this film is about to come out on DVD, if the gods are good, it will be an Oscar nominee in a major category. It would make an enormous difference on DVD.”