Here’s what Glenn Sumi of Now, the Toronto weekly, is saying about Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain: “This eagerly anticipated film, based on Anne Proulx’s short story, tracks the decades-long love affair between two cowboys. Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) meet and eventually merge while herding sheep on a mountain, and though both get married and live in different states, they occasionally hook up to go ‘fishing,’ although that’s not enough for Jack, the more needy of the two. After all the thinly veiled homo-eroticism in westerns, there’s something cathartic about seeing men go homo on the range, and Ledger and Gyllenhaal give it their best, physically and emotionally. The theme of unfulfilled love never misses, and it’s handled with taste and restraint. But like all of Lee’s films, the pace occasionally lags and the pic could easily be 15 minutes shorter.”

Limits of Charm

It’s not “nice” to have a Keira Knightley problem. Speaking against a beautiful spirited young woman never wins you any favors. It is seen as impolite and ungentlemanly, and perhaps even uncouth. But I can’t suppress it any longer.
She’s 20 years old and beautiful and a near-star…her face on the one-sheets, her name in the gossip columns. And she keeps making film after film. Her next outing is Domino (New Line, 10.14), a Tony Scott urban actioner, and then comes Pride and Prejudice (Focus Features, 11.18) and then, early next July, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.

Keira Knightley

And I swear to God she doesn’t have it. I don’t mean sex appeal or vivaciousness or any of that natural-aura stuff. I mean she doesn’t have “it.” And it’s not for lack of experience. She’s been acting since she was five or six, or for the last 14 or 15 years.
Everything she’s in, in every role she played except one, I’ve never believed her. Certainly not for the last couple of years, since she became a big name. I went with her performance in Bend It Like Beckham (which seemed natural and unforced), but everything since has felt arch, postured, projected.
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There’s an unfussed-with, straight-from-the-heart vibe you can sense when an actor or actress is in the zone, and Knightley doesn’t seem to know the first thing about this.
It was her performance in The Jacket that woke me. There was a scene in which her character got extremely angry and defensive when Adrien Brody tried to explain his relationship to her, and I remember being pulled out of the film by Knightley’s overplaying…the way her eyes glared and went nutso and she opened her mouth and trembled with what was supposed to be rage or fear.
I saw her play Julie Christie’s Lara role in a 2002 TV miniseries of Dr. Zhivago …about ten or fifteen minutes worth, I should say…and found it draining. Christie put soul and sensuality and a certain disciplined cultivation into her performance in David Lean’s 1965 version. Knightley’s performance wasn’t in the same galaxy.

As Guinevere in King Arthur

She’s felt the same way to me in Love Actually (I didn’t feel a hint of genuine emotion from her in that abominable film) and King Arthur (nothing but nothing happened between her and Clive Owen) and Pirates of the Caribbean, etc.
Now it’s gotten to the point of my going “uh, oh” when I hear she’s in something.
I’ve seen Knightley in Pride and Prejudice (Focus Features, 11.18) and I’ve told a publicist I won’t get into it until it plays at the Toronto Film Festival. But I think at this point she needs to be drop-dead exceptional in Domino (New Line, 10.14).
She’s got to be good enough in it so people like me don’t just say, “Oh, she’s better in this one.” She’s got to be good enough so that she doesn’t get in the way of whatever the movie is trying to do. She’s got to just be and then flow with it.
People are delighted with Knightley…that young, beautiful, Audrey Hepburn-ish quality, and the way she seems to add fizz to any movie she’s in. (“Seems” being a relative term.) And I know all the guys crave her and dream about her. Last year London’s Tatler called her the most desirable single woman in the England.
But there’s nothing about her that sticks or sinks in. Whatever it is that Rachel McAdams possesses and dispenses, Knightley has not.

All she has is her youth, her sexual spirited-ness (that playful, slightly taunting thing she does with her eyes whenever a male costar is sniffing around), and her good looks…but there’s even something a tad off in that department.
I do know that when Knightley smiles something odd happens. I don’t know if “smile” is really the right word. Her eyes compress into feral little slits and little bags bunch up above and below, and it looks a bit scary. And then her mouth opens and her almost-fearsome teeth are exposed (she could play a vampire at a drop of a hat) and there’s a slight glint of madness in all of this as her head tilts back and she lets go with a throaty “hah-hah-hah!”
Granted, a certain exuberant joie de vivre gushes out, but just as some people are said to have intoxicating smiles, can’t the opposite be true as well?
I was at a party last January for Inside Deep Throat at the Sundance Film Festival, and I was talking to Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly, and Knightley — her hair cropped like it is in Domino — was there. She and Kelly had been together on the Domino set (he wrote the excellent script) and they had a brief chat at the party, and when they finished Kelly told me Knightley made him weak in the knees in a very special way.
That’s probably what most guys want from actresses, to feel aroused and desiring. There’s nothing wrong with that, and we might as well let it go at that.
As Robert Mitchum’s character said in Out of the Past, “I can let it all go.”

With Adrien Brody on the set of The Jacket

Yer Blues

I never liked John Landis’ The Blues Brothers (1980). I’ve always found it obnoxious, egoistic, forced, unfunny. I had always heard it was a big cocaine movie, and I always believed that story because the film has a cranked-up quality.
I was a pretty big fan of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd’s before it came out. I remember going to see them perform a Jake and Elwood blues concert at Carnegie Hall in ’80 or thereabouts, and having a pretty good time. But I cooled down on these guys big-time after The Blues Brothers.
I remember having a breakfast interview with Landis at a New York hotel with a Universal publicist sharing the table. It was 1982 and we were talking about An American Werewolf in London, which I liked. And I remember Landis wolfing down his soft-boiled eggs and toast and home fries and slurping his coffee as I poked around with my chickenshit questions (i.e., ones that didn’t try to challenge or probe as much as kiss ass).

Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi in late ’70s Blues Brothers mode.

And then, out of nowhere, an unfortunate but honest question came out. I asked Landis about the discrepancy between the “enormity” of The Blues Brothers — the massive over-whacked scale of the thing, like those ridiculous car chases through Chicago with fifty or six cop cars after Jake and Ellwood’s — and the “humble origins” of the Chicago blues.
“That movie was not about the humble origins of the Chicago blues,” Landis retorted. “It was a musical comedy in the style and attitude of ‘Saturday Night Live’…”
But it was about Chicago blues music, I said, and the music came from black guys who’d moved up from the south and lived on the South Side, taking from the ache and the rough-and-tumble of life and turning it into blues numbers, and the movie was funny and all” — I was lying when I said this — “but it just didn’t seem…”
“It wasn’t a documentary!” Landis repeated. He was getting pissed, and the Universal guy was looking concerned and gesturing with his hand, telling me to let it go. So I turned the subject back to American Werewolf and the mood was cool again.
In any case, I was a bit startled to read some very kind and admiring comments about the new Blues Brothers DVD the other day from Dave Kehr, the New York Times DVD guy.
The Blues Brothers “may have arrived near the end of one tradition” — i.e., the old-school movie musical — “but it helped to found another: the ‘Saturday Night Live’ spin-off.

“Giving a feature-length depth and interest to characters conceived for (and through) sketch comedy is no easy proposition, as the many disastrous SNL vehicles over the years have copiously demonstrated.
“But Jake and Elwood have a staying power unusual for the form, perhaps because Mr. Aykroyd (who wrote the script with Mr. Landis) draws so affectionately and authoritatively on the blues tradition that stands behind them.”
This is precisely what the film doesn’t do. It gives, as Kehr notes, “slam-bang [musical] production numbers” to James Brown, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, but there’s never a feeling that the film is really “with” them.
The Blues Brothers was a jape, a flamboyant showboat and a kind of musical put-on. It was Landis, Belushi and Aykroyd leading a splashy Hollywood parade that was mainly about money and enormity and drugs and bloat.

Whackings

I asked a tongue-in-cheek question in Wednesday’s column: “If Hollywood was run like the mythological mafia and you, the reader, were the boss of all the families with absolute control, who in the Hollywood filmmaking game would you decide to whack for the good of the industry?”
And here’s what came in…a torrent. I think it’s safe to say there’s a lot of anger out there. It’s also apparent that the most famously loathed Hollywood figures (Michael Bay, George Lucas, Brett Ratner, Jan de Bont, Cuba Gooding, et. al.) of recent years are still tops of the pops.
Here and there I’ve inserted in a Wells exception at the end of whatever statement I think is unfair or incorrect.
“Oh good God, where do you begin with this list? So many awful, worthless, snot-nosed filmmakers and actors, so little time. But here are a few….
“Martin Lawrence. Crimes: Every single starring movie this big zit has ever appeared in should be stomped out. To call Lawrence an actor or a comedian is an offense to anyone who ever took the profession seriously. Without question the single unfunniest person to ever sully a movie screen.

“Adam Sandler — Crimes: Big Daddy, Billy Madison, Little Nicky, Mr. Deeds, helping give Rob Schneider work, etc, etc, etc. Nowhere near as awful as Lawrence, and PT Anderson managed to make Punch Drunk Love work nicely, but I’d sacrifice that swell little movie if every other lazy piece of crap Sandler has made, or nursed along, would disappear with it.
“Rob Schneider — So obvious it needs no explanation.
“Rob Reiner — Crimes: Everything he directed after A Few Good Men. Reiner is a tragedy — a director who started out very impressively (This is Spinal Tap, Misery) and seemed infallible until he flipped over and decided to suck at everything.
“Rob Cohen — Crimes: direction of Dragonheart, The Fast and Furious, XXX, Stealth. Whacking not necessary. Will probably commit suicide in wake of Stealth. It’s a bad time to be named Rob.
[Wells exception: Rob Cohen has his issues, as we all do, but The Fast and the Furious is a great B movie in the Sam Arkoff tradition, and, I think, his best film ever.]
“Michael Bay — Too easy! Let him live so we can continue to revel in telling him how much he sucks.
“George Lucas — WAY too easy!
“Chris Columbus — Crimes: Home Alone 2, his Harry Potter movies, Bicentennial Man, etc.
“Cuba Gooding, Jr. — Crimes: Snow Dogs, Chill Factor, Rat Race, Instinct…worst post-Oscar career ever. Two final words: Boat Trip. Probably begging Jamie Foxx for a job as we speak.” — Erik Ainsworth

Brett Ratner

“I think a lot of the people who’d be whacked would be the backroom players, by which I mean the ones who seem to inhibit creative people by trying to make the movies more of a product and business and less of an art form.
“It goes from the ridiculous (Jon Peters and his quest to make Batman more merchandisable than God, Tom Rothman and his hiring Brett Ratner to direct X3 as a big FU to Bryan Singer) to the not-so-ridiculous (Walter Parkes for emasculating Cameron Crowe’s Untitled, every development exec who has given Terry Gilliam and Martin Scorsese hell for anything, etc.)…but either way these guys all need to go on a ride to the New Jersey Meadowlands.
“I think, and not to sound like a geek, that the above phenomenon happens most with geeky movies, so things like The Watchmen (which I’ve never read, but the idea of Paul Greengrass doing a comic book/superhero movie gets me jazzed), Gilliam’s Good Omens, Quixote, etc., tend to get scrapped because of this focus on merchandising and tie-ins and all of the stuff that has nothing to do with filmmaking, but everything to do with product.
“Not to say this isn’t a business — it is, and companies are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in making movies, and need to show returns to keep making movies — but when it’s entirely about product, the real reason why you’re in the movie-making business kind of flies out the window…I don’t know if there’s a slump or not, but as someone said, the easiest way to bring crowds into the movie theatres is just to make better movies. People who don’t get that don’t deserve to work in Hollywood.
“And the senior executive at Warner Bros. who made the call to hire Chris Columbus to direct the first two Harry Potter films…unless this person was also behind hiring of Alfonso Cuaron….whack!

“I’m torn on the Weinsteins, because they did screw with Scorsese on Gangs of New York, Gilliam on The Brothers Grimm, and they spiked Spike Lee’s version of Rent. (Which led to Chris Columbus directing it!) But they’ve also being pushing the envelope for 20 years trying to get films that no one else makes made. For that, I’d spare them.” – Sridhar Prasad.
“Is whacking the way to go? Are we past the point of reprogramming? Locking up Michael Bay, McG, etc. in your prison and then forcing them to watch good movies 16 hours a day, until they can’t comprehend the shit they made before? It might be kinda fun to see how long it would take to break them.” — James Watson, Tallahassee, FL.
“At the very top of my hit list would be Tom Cruise. His recent actions and public behavior sets a bad example for the organization as a whole. He needs to be reprimanded and made an example of in the most obvious way possible.
“Taking out Cruise would be a very Fredo-esque hit, and one that could set in motion the downfall of the family if not handled properly. Regardless, I can’t think of a stronger way to send a message to any who would follow in his footsteps. Though he is at the top of the list, he is by no means to be the first to be dealt with, rather the last. It makes the job that much more poignant.
“The second one to be iced would be Brett Ratner. Making horribly bad big-budget cinema is okay, but a minimum standard must be set. Here is that bar.
“Rounding out the list to make a solid three would be Ben Affleck. I like Ben, so he wouldn’t actually be a full-on hit. Just a warning, broken legs or a trashed mansion….something like that. You got one more chance kid, better make it work.

Tom Cruise

“So there you have it, in this order: Affleck (a warning), Rattner (a message) and Cruise (an example).” — Gabriel Groves
“Okay, first off, this wouldn’t be a one-shot deal. This would be about sending a message. Those who survived would have to live in fear of me. So here goes…
“Steven Spielberg. I worship this guy at the altar, but if he were to get clipped, imagine the fear this would instill in Michael Bay and Rob Cohen, wondering what in God’s name might happen to them, etc. They wouldn’t be able to sleep.
“Mark Wahlberg. His last bit of Boogie Nights goodwill went away with `I got the rock now.’
“Larry or Andy Wachowski. I’d make Keanu pick which one survives, Sophie’s-Choice style. Somebody has to pay for the total Matrix collapse of ’03, and you can only blame Joel Silver to a certain extent.
“And finally, ironically, compassionately…Francis Ford Coppola. To put the poor man out of his misery.” — John Sheridan
“For the good of Hollywood and the moviegoing public, I propose that first in line to be whacked (metaphorically, of course) should be either John Carpenter or John Landis. Preferably both.
“Don’t get me wrong, they’ve both contributed just fine in the past. Halloween, The Thing, The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London..but that was then, this is now. The creative well’s dried up, they’re going through the motions and when a studio somehow forgets what dross Ghosts Of Mars or Beverly Hills Cop III really were, millions of dollars get wasted on their next cinematic atrocity. Money that could have been spent on up-and-coming talent.
“They’re like pet dogs. Years ago, they were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, full of energy and good fun to be with. Now you’ve got to spend your time around their embarrassingly insipid shit. It’s better for you…better for the dogs…that they get put down.” — Phil Guest, Bournemouth, UK.

Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone in The Godfather.

“Michael Bay. Car chase. Slow-motion shooting. Then blow him up. Let him sleep with the birds.” — Chris Andrien
“Hit #1: Brett Ratner and fast, before he can do any more damage to X3.
“Hit #2: Everyone at Dark Castle Entertainment except Robert Zemeckis, although I still might kneecap him for producing Gothika.
“Hit #3: George Lucas, for perverting everything good about Star Wars for more money than anyone could ever spend in a lifetime.
“Hit #4: Uwe Boll, who somehow got $60 million for something called Dungeon Siege, and without the help of anyone at Dark Castle. It’s insulting to guys in angora sweaters everywhere to call this guy our generation’s Ed Wood.
“Hit #5: Jan De Bont, and here’s why: Speed 2, The Haunting, Tomb Raider 2 and The Haunting. Men of good conscience need to do whatever’s necessary to keep that man from getting behind a camera again, and he’s already prepping a movie about a giant Megalodon shark. Put Luca Brasi on this one.” — Man with No Name
“If I were the Hollywood Don, I would just start killing all the big names who’ve failed in egregious ways to live up to the promise of their earlier careers….in order to scare all the young guys. The following filmmakers would need to die:
“1. Ben Stiller. The man has to go for the sake of his comedies. He’s been making the same movie with the same character for too many years.
“2. Steven Spielberg or George Lucas. Major complacency from two guys that have defined the whole blockbuster system is too much. If I’m the big boss, they get put in a room together and whoever walks out still has a job.
“3. Oh, and while I’m at it? No rappers in movies. The few good actor rappers, like Mos Def, will just have to be cut for the general good…sorry.
“4. Same thing as #3 for pop stars.
“5. Same thing as #2 and #3 for models and any cast member of SNL. Stick to short skits and assume that your brilliant idea won’t translate into a 100-minute feature film.

Ben Stiller

“6. Quentin Tarantino. His movies are not good enough to come out once every five years or whatever.
“7. Wes Craven. Red Eye shows he still has it, but someone must take the blame for the rush of crappy horror films, especially the recent onslaught of PG-13 shitbombs. I’d blame him since Scream really got the ball rolling. I think the money it made convinced too many smaller studios to come out with similar splatter flicks and forced the big companies to cash in with all the horror fluff we see today.
“8. No more sports movies or movies based on extreme sports. Miracle and The Rookie were decent, but you also have ones like Torque , The Bad News Bears, Motorcross, The Fast and the Furious, etc. etc.
“9. Tim Burton. Too many movies nowadays think quirky characters or inventive set design equals good.
“10. Eddie Murphy. I’d make him an example of talented people who must stay in the genre that made them famous. His death would serve as a warning to Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, and others.
“The following who would get a sound beating and be threatened with worse:
“1. Robert DeNiro. He had a free pass from me until about five years ago. I’ll let Meet the Parents/Focker thing go, but him being in every other “thriller” that comes out has to stop. Have your career go out with a bang.
“2. Ben Affleck. I’m convinced he can act, so perhaps scaring him to death will inspire some better performances and/or script selections.
“3. Brad Pitt. Same thing as Affleck. More films like Fight Club and 12 Monkeys and less Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Troy, etc….or else!
4. Anyone thinking of a sequel or making a movie that may require a sequel. All must be approved.” — Jason Tanner

“To do any good with an epidemic as large as the creative-deprivation tank known as Hollywood, you’d need something larger than Corleone ordering a hit — something along the lines of Stalin ordering a purge is what’s needed. The film business is one asylum that needs to be run by the inmates. To `what do you call 500 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?’ I would add bean-counters and development executives.” — David Ludwig
“If you were looking for a power play you might seriously have to consider a big player like George Lucas. Put a stop to the man who felt that CGI was more important than story. The film industry might just be the better for it.
“Angelina Jolie. All of the Hollywood wives would rejoice. She won’t be done until somebody stops her.
“Michael Bay. Enough is enough.” — James Kent
“You don’t have to whack Tim Burton and Kenneth Branagh, but you might want to break their thumbs for squandering real ability on masturbatory, self-indulgent junk. I would do a quick knee-capping on George Lucas” — Griff Griffis
“Don’t take this personally, but as the Don I would whack all the critics and sites that spend an inordinate amount of time dissecting and criticizing every movie several months before it comes out.
“I’m speaking specifically of sites like Ain’t It Cool News. Much like Fox News has the effect of feeding and reinforcing the viewpoints of the converted that follow it, AICN uses its clout to try to mold films into the vision of the guys that run the site. This predigesting is another thing contributing to the demise of movies.
“I’ve read good reviews on AICN, but most of the time, AICN’s pieces start something like, `I truly hope this movie is good, but the signing of so-and-so as director/star etc. really has me worried.’ From that point on, the movie doesn’t have a chance.
“Or, alternatively, ‘The news out of the latest Spielberg/Lucas/Jackson flick has my geek heart aflutter.’ The result of these posts is that, no matter how big a piece of shit the movie eventually turns out to be, Knowles and his crew will support it with their last breaths.

The widely despised McG, captured, one presumes, on the set of one of the Charlie’s Angels films.

“This stuff creates a bizarre pack mentality and buzz which pigeonholes a movie long before it has a chance to stand or fall on its own merits. I single out AICN because it’s the site I’m most familiar with, but they’re not the only offenders. It’s a shame that some movies can barely get a fair shake any more, simply because they had the misfortune of using a non-genre director, while others get accolades simply because some faded fanboy god is in the director’s chair.
“Luca, Luca…my very good friend.” — Rich Swank, Orlando.
“Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer — kings of the big, dumb, stupid movies that have ripped the heart out of filmmaking. Soul-less, plot-less, script-less, their movies are all about blowing things up, and VERY loud soundtracks. They’re obscenities. Tie them to cement shoes, and dump ’em both in the Pacific. The film world will be lots better off without ’em. “– Lewis Beale
“If I were going to execute people, I’d start with Keanu Reeves. His movies qualify as crimes against humanity. In fact, just about everyone associated with Point Break would get at least a near fatal beating. Also, McG’s body would mysteriously turn up at the bottom of a mine shaft.
[Wells exception: Keanu has been pretty good in more than a few films. He was perfect in The Matrix and in the Bill and Ted movies and in River’s Edge. And what’s so terrible about Point Break?]
“I’d give the horse in the bed treatment to Tom Hanks to warn him to never make another movie like The Terminal again; in fact, never do any kind of movie that requires an accent again. I’d also take a hammer to Spielberg’s hands until he recut War of the Worlds so that the son dies. ” — Brad Sims
“The #1 person on my hit list would have to be Joel Schumacher. Next would be George Lucas. Before the most recent Star Wars trilogy I would have simply had my goons dangle him out of a window until he agreed to hire a writer to redo the crap Lucas calls dialogue just so I wouldn’t have to stick my fingers in my ears and hum loudly in the theater during the love scenes.
“I’m not a big Star Wars fan and haven’t been since I turned 15 or 16 but most of my friends are and they don’t appreciate that loud humming let alone the sound of me shifting uncomfortably in my seat after/during every bad line.” — Jon Scott

John Landis

“If I were the absolute Don Corleone of Hollywood, these are people who would need to go…
“Peter Jackson and New Line, and Mr. and Mrs. Wachowski. You must pay for your sins, and those sins include forcing people to pay to see more than one movie to get closure. No matter how you dress it up, you still have to tell a story.
“Anyone who is so unoriginal that they have to produce remakes of old movies that don’t need to be remade and shouldn’t be remade, especially by decent filmmakers trying to cash a check.
“Anyone making a film for the express purpose of depressing you into winning an Oscar because their film is important. Hello, Mr. Minghella? This is your mountain. Sure is cold now, isn’t it?
“Actors so determined not to be typecast that they will sign on to any piece of crap just to break the mold, and refusing to listen to that little voice in their head that says that it just isn’t right. With that goes the managers and agents and entourage feeding these actors the ego boosting b.s. at the expense of all of us.
“Filmmakers not named Wes Anderson playing madlibs cinema. Anderson perfected the genre with The Royal Tenenbaums, but now you have so many people trying to do it. Garden State had the same problems (Portman in a helmet, Gulf War cards, etc.? )” — Evan Boucher.

Shoes Again

“I saw Curtis Hanson’s In Her Shoes at an early press screening a few weeks ago, and your source is right on the money. It’s a terrific film that is destined to go over very well with audiences, if Fox can bring them in.
“Another critic said, ‘Women will love it because of the relationship between the sisters and guys will love it because Cameron spends a lot of her time in her underwear or in a skimpy bikini.’ But it’s more than that. It’s witty, credible and exceptionally well-played by everyone, including MacLaine, who comes into the picture halfway through and becomes kind of the touchstone for the second half of the story.

Cameron Diaz as she appears in Curtin Hanson’s In Her Shoes (20th Century Fox, 10.7)

“I also appreciated how the screenplay doesn’t throw in a last-minute tragedy to get the tears flowing. The tensions and the happier moments between the sisters felt genuine because Diaz and Collette get ample time to really establish the personalities of these women.
“Collette is an overachieving lawyer who thrives in the workplace and doesn’t really know how to function outside of it. She operates almost entirely on brain power, but she doesn’t have much time for compassion or even relaxation. Diaz plays a troubled, dyslexic cutie with unrealistic expectations from life.
“In one of the film’s most painful scenes, she skips out on a job interview her sister set up for her to zoom up to New York for an audition to be an MTV host. She’s bubbly enough, but she can’t follow the teleprompter.
“Ashamed of her lack of education, she forces herself to play the ditzy good-time gal who can always get free drinks, even though she’s becoming aware of the fact she can’t get away with that forever.
“Collette tells her something that’s cruel but true, along the lines of `young, promiscuous women are considered fun, but middle-aged promiscuous women are just pathetic.’ (I cringed, because I’ve actually said that same thing to someone I know who was on a similar course.)

“MacLaine’s character is outwardly strong, but a bit lonely, the kind of person who takes care of everyone else so well in order to avoid considering her own needs. Her scenes with Diaz (who initially sees MacLaine as someone she can sponge off of, but quickly figures out that’s not going to be the case) are just terrific.
“I give a lot of credit to Hanson, who took what could have been chick-flick soap opera and turned it into a movie that’s going to connect with a whole lot of people, like As Good As It Gets, which it often reminded me of.
“If I can squeeze it into my schedule, I would happily see it again in Toronto. One thing to note: The print we saw (about 90 % complete) ran about 125 minutes and the Toronto Film Festival page lists it as being 130 minutes, so unless they beefed it up at the last minute it’s not quite as long as you were told.” — James Sanford

Reading Blood

“It’s good you’re going to grab Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’ for another read. It’s been one of those for me that, about once a year, it’ll be a rainy Sunday or something, nothing else to do, and I’ll say, ‘Think I’ll read ‘In Cold Blood’ again,” and then spend the better part of the day with it.

“I know there’d been a lot of random murder-robberies before the Clutter killings, but this one, and what Capote did with it, I think ended a lot of our innocence. I went to college in Kansas and saw the movie in Wichita when it hit, about a decade or so after the murders, surrounded by those infinite plains and very interested Kansans.
“I had a similar, more pointed experience a few years later in Wichita Falls, Texas, viewing the premiere of The Last Picture Show, which was shot in black-and-white the year before in the area, surrounded then by local extras in the film, the small group of movie aficionados in the town, and more of those infinite plains.) — Joe Hanrahan.

Keira

“I think Keira Knightley is easily the most over-rated actress that my country has ever produced. Every film she’s in she always has her mouth slightly open, giving the impression that she’s a zombie. (She has the acting talents of one) I saw her in that Dr. Zhivago drama, and she looked like a lost child in it, drawing me out of the story. (I haven’t seen the David Lean version).
“You are spot on saying that she hasn’t got ‘it’ like, say, Natalie Portman. I realize she’s only 20, but at the moment she has a lot of catching up to do to get anywhere near our best actress working at the moment, Kate Winslet.” — Ben Colegate, London, England.

Keira Knightley and Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean.

“Oh my God, it is so refreshing to see your comments about Keira Knightley! I’ve been wondering what is wrong with me, because in every film I’ve seen her in (except maybe Bend it Like Beckham) I’ve failed to see what the hype is all about.
“She definitely does not have ‘it.’ I don’t think she’s a good actress at all, and, in fact, her looks bug me to no end as well. It’s that pouty mouth, I guess, it has one expression…pouty. She is actually the main reason I have no desire to see Pride and Prejudice, and at this point I’m real ‘iffy’ on whether or not to see Domino. I’ll wait until I read more reviews and hear from friends.
“Your comparison to Rachel McAdams is a good one. In my mind, however, perhaps because her looks are similar, every time I see Keira I think about Natalie Portman. Natalie is also young, also has been acting for a long time. But Natalie definitely has ‘it.’ I think she has talent in spades, has been getting better and better and will be seeing lots of critical acclaim and award attention in the future. I don’t see that for Keira.
“Thanks for making me feel I’m not alone.” — Cindy Wick

Grabs

Pub in Yorkville area of Toronto, about five blocks from where I’m staying.

On St. George, just north of Bloor.

My last Manhattan shot of the summer — bootleg DVDs laid out on the cement floor of the Union Square L line.

I don’t know why Robert Towne’s Ask the Dust didn’t make the Telluride Film Festival line-up. I know there was a definite interest in showing it there, but I guess it wasn’t quite fine-tuned enough. (Towne told me a few weeks ago he wasn’t sure if it would be done in time.) But the festival is certainly showing Edmond, a David Mamet downer drama abut Bill Macy wandering around a city in a state of suicidal depression; Bennett Miller’s Capote; Liev Schreiber’s Everything is Illuminated, Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s Bee Season; James Mangold’s Walk the Line with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon; Andy Garcia’s Lost City; Conversations With Other Women; Brokeback Mountain; Be With Me, Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now and several others. They’re also showing a restored print of the 1976 Dino de Laurentiis remake of King Kong…kidding! They’re actually showing the 1933 Merian C. Cooper version, plus a doc about its making.

Truman Show

I’ve seen Bennett Miller’s Capote (Sony Classics, 9.30) twice now, and I’m afraid I’ve got it bad. I love this film…so much that my reasons for feeling this way are a bit more personal than usual.
Why get into it now, a little more than four weeks before it opens? Because I’m in Toronto and for me, the festival has begun (advance screenings are happening left and right for local press), and because everyone will be giving Capote pats on the back once the festival starts on 9.9 so I might as well pat first.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the conflicted, terrier-like Truman Capote in Bennett Miller’s Capote (Sony Classics, 9.30)

I’m taken with Capote partly because it’s about a writer (Truman Capote) and the sometimes horrendously difficult process that goes into creating a first-rate piece of writing, and especially the various seductions and deceptions that all writers need to administer with skill and finesse to get a source to really cough up.
And it’s about how this gamesmanship sometimes leads to emotional conflict and self-doubt and yet, when it pays off, a sense of tremendous satisfaction and even tranquility. I’ve been down this road, and it’s not for the faint of heart.
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But I’m also convinced that Capote is exceptional on its own terms. It’s one of the two or three best films of the year so far — entertaining and also fascinating, quiet and low-key but never boring and frequently riveting, economical but fully stated, and wonderfully confident and relaxed in its own skin.
And it delivers, in Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s performance as Capote, one of the most affecting emotional rides I’ve taken in this or any other year…a ride that’s full of undercurrents and feelings that are almost always in conflict (and which reveal conflict within Capote-the-character), and is about hurting this way and also that way and how these different woundings combine in Truman Capote to form a kind of perfect emotional storm.
It’s finally about a writer initially playing the game but eventually the game turning around and playing him.

Hoffman is right at the top of my list right now — he’s the guy to beat in the Best Actor category. Anyone who’s seen Capote and says he’s not in this position is averse to calling a spade a spade.
I’m not talking about Hoffman doing a first-rate impression of a famously effeminate celebrity author of the ’60s and ’70s. I’m speaking of his ability to make us feel the presence of Capote’s extraordinary talent and sensitivity and arrogance…a self-amused cocky quality born of extraordinary smarts and a feisty temperament that could suddenly veer into aloofness or even cruelty and at other times devolve into childlike vulnerability.
There’s always a sense of at least two and sometimes three or four rivers running through this character at once, all of it vibrating and churning around in Hoffman’s liquidy eyes and, when things get especially difficult, his nearly trembling pinkish- white face, and in the way he walks and gestures and shrieks with laughter at parties, and in the way he occasionally just stands utterly still. It’s an astonishing piece of work.
A friend thinks Hoffman isn’t small enough to play Capote, who was about 5′ 2″. Other naysayers may be heard. There’s a tradition of straight actors portraying flamboyant queens (I’m thinking way back to Cliff Gorman’s performance in William Freidkin’s The Boys in the Band) that hasn’t dated all that well, but Hoffman is doing so much more in this film that the comparison isn’t worth mentioning.
I can’t stop re-running my favorite parts of Hoffman’s performance. There are so many lines and moments, but to describe them would only muck it up. Maybe later…

Truman Capote, Kansas Bureau of Investigation chief Alvin Dewey, and Dewey’s wife Marie in ’60 or ’61.

Capote is fundamentally about “In Cold Blood,” Capote’s groundbreaking non-fiction novel that came out in early ’66.
The book was about the murder of the four members of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, and their killers, Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino) and Perry Smith (Clifton Collins, Jr.). The film is about Capote’s researching and writing of the book, a process that lasted from November 1959 until the summer of ’65, and which pretty much tore Capote to shreds.
The core material has to do with a kind of love affair that happened between Capote and Smith during the death-row interviews conducted by Capote from the time of the murderers’ conviction in early 1960 until the hangings of Smith and Hickock in April ’65. Capote fell in love with Smith because they had shared similar traumatic upbringings (alcoholic mothers, family suicides) and because Smith had certain poetic-artistic aspirations.
“It’s like we grew up in the same house, except one day Perry went out the back door and I went out the front,” Capote tells his longtime friend and confidante Nelle Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), the author of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
He really feels for Smith…you can see it, feel it…but Capote is scrutinizing enough to step back at every juncture and eyeball his relationship with Smith in literary terms. After persuading Smith to let him read his diaries, Capote tells Lee that this sad, doomed, hugely conflicted man is “a gold mine.”
The fascination is in watching Capote play Smith like a pro while getting more and more caught up with him emotionally. He gets the two killers an attorney following their conviction so he can get their execution delayed so he can get their full story. And then he lies to Smith time and again.

Mark Pellegrino (left, seated) as Dick Hickock and Clifton Collins, Jr., as Perry Smith in Capote.

The real Hickock and Smith, upon their arrival in Kansas in early January after being arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada.

And after he’s gotten most of their story he begins to acknowledge that he wants them executed so his book will have a finale, even though his feelings for Smith have always been, as far as it goes, earnest.
There’s a nice scene when Capote tells Kansas Bureau of Investigation chief Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper) that he’s decided to call his book “In Cold Blood,” and Dewey says, “Is that a reference to the crime, or the fact that you’re still talking to the killers?”
When their long-delayed death sentences are finally at hand, Capote’s feelings come to a boil. His last meeting with them, moments before the end, is choice. Tears flooding his eyes, Capote tells them both (but particularly Perry), “I did everything I could…I truly did.” Which was true, in a manner of speaking.
I never figured Bennett Miller would direct Capote quite so well. He’s never directed a feature and has mainly confined himself to TV commercials, although he directed a very fine 1998 documentary called The Cruise, a black-and-white portrait of the great Timothy “Speed” Levitch.
To me, Capote feels as controlled and precise, as emotionally on-target and penetrating as any film by Louis Malle. You could run it with Damage and Atlantic City at the Museum of Modern Art, and it would feel like the exact same guy calling the shots.
I was especially taken with Miller’s decision to shoot Capote in widescreen Panavision (2.35 to 1). Stories of this sort — internal, intimate, dialogue-driven — are usually shot in 1.85 to 1 (or on video). Was Miller thinking about creating some kind of visual relationship to Conrad Hall’s widescreen photography in Richard Brooks’ In Cold Blood, even though that 1967 film was shot in black and white?

And a sincere tip of the hat to screenwriter Dan Futterman, who worked on the screenplay for a long time before getting it right. It’s based on Gerald Clarke’s “Capote,” which is probably the best Capote biography.
Futterman has known Miller since they were twelve, and they’ve both known Hoffman since ’84 (i.e., the year Capote died of alcoholism) when they met at a summer theatre program in Saratoga Springs,
Every performance in Capote feels rooted and lived-in…nobody seems to be “acting” in the slightest.
Clifton Collins (previously best known as the gay Mexican assassin in Traffic) is as good as Hoffman. He plays it subdued and far less animated, but he lets you see into Smith’s tormented soul, and I didn’t think once about Robert Blake’s strong performance as Smith in the 1967 film.
Keener’s Lee is restrained and exacting and yet she’s fully “there.” And Cooper’s Dewey delivers just the right mix of gruff Midwestern conservatism and emotional suppleness. (He’s a tiny bit warmer than John Forsythe’s Dewey was in Brooks’ film.) Dewey’s wife Marie, a friendly and sophisticated soul, is warmly and agreeably captured by Amy Ryan. And I love Bob Balaban’s small but succinct performance as former New Yorker editor William Shawn, who was in Capote’s literary corner the whole time.
The lesser lights are Bruce Greenwood, as Capote’s significant other Jack Dunphy, who hasn’t much to say or do, and Mark Pellegrino’s Hickock, who isn’t nearly as emotional or gregarious as Scott Wilson was in the Brooks film, although he seems like more of a killer than Wilson did.

Gravesite in Garden City, Kansas — a mid-sized city to the east of Holcomb.

Photo in June 1960 high-school yearbook.

Capote may not sell as many tickets as Crash did, but it will be astonishing if people of taste or discernment don’t see it and tell their friends, etc. I realize that the number of people who read books, much less those who remember “In Cold Blood” or who remember Capote from his talk-show appearances, is relatively small. But if the word-of-mouth is good…
The challenge to Sony Pictures Classics is to keep the inevitable talk going into Oscar season and keep flogging it with the Academy.
After I send this column off today I’m paying a visit to a bookstore and buying “In Cold Blood” again. I haven’t read it since I wrote a book report about it in my senior year of high school.

Mafia Rules

I have this idea for a piece I’d like to run on Friday. I’m going to need write-in replies sent no later than midday Thursday.
The idea is, if Hollywood were run like the mythological mafia and you, the reader, were the boss of all the families with absolute control, whom in the Hollywood filmmaking game would you decide to whack for the good of the industry?
Not because they’re not nice people or aren’t skilled or have nice smiles, but whom would you eliminate in order to strengthen the industry and discourage bad tendencies, etc.? Remember that being the boss is a lonely job because somebody has to make the tough calls.

“I ask you, Don Corleone, please…spare Michael Bay.”

If I was Don Corleone of Hollywood and Hollywood was a real mafia society, I would put a general preemptive contract on anyone planning to make a film like Love Actually.
I would also put a contract, no offense, out on Johnny Knoxville. Somebody needs to pay for The Dukes of Hazzard, and Seann William Scott gets a temporary pass because he’s trying to redeem himself by making Southland Tales for Richard Kelly.
I would also take out Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, the 007 producers.
I don’t think I need to say this, but I don’t believe in whacking people in the real world. I don’t even like stepping on bugs.
If I were an actual (i.e., actual mythological) mafia don I would build a secret private jailhouse — a maximum security prison out in some remote corner of the world — and then I would kidnap the guys who need to be whacked and send them to this jail, and they’d stay there with three hots and a cot until I died or got whacked myself.
My inspiration for this piece is Anthony Quinn’s Col. Andrea Stavros character in The Guns of Navarone.

David Niven, Gregory peck, Anthony Quinn in poster art for J. Lee Thompson’s The Guns of Navarone.

Quinn, Gregory Peck and David Niven are discussing the fate of Anthony Quayle’s Lucky character, who was broken his leg during a climb, and they’ve come up with two possible scenarios — take him with them on their mission to blow up the guns, or leave him to be found by the Germans.
And Quinn says, “There is, of course, a third option. One bullet now. Better for him, better for the mission.” Quinn is not playing a monster, just a hard-nosed commando.
And I’m channeling this spirit because, as Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz would undoubtedly agree, doing the hard necessary thing is not always an act of kindness.

Hooligans

“After reading your take on Lexi Alexander’s Green Street Hooligans, I felt I had to give you a UK perspective on the movie. I watched what has been re-titled Green Street for UK audiences at a London preview last week.
“To me, and to most of the preview audience I saw the movie with, football hooliganism is old news. It was a hot button issue in the 1980s (when Alan Clarke’s The Firm was made) but since then most of the biggest firms have been busted.
“Thankfully, hooliganism has been mostly stamped out by no-tolerance policing, video surveillance at all games and better intelligence. It still exists, but it has gone underground.

“I grew up in a mainly working class neighborhood in a city called Portsmouth, on the south coast of England. Much like the movie, Portsmouth had a poor football club (although they’ve gotten a lot better) and an infamous firm of football hooligans (the 657 crew). Hooliganism was born out of a culture of binge drinking and violence.
“The idea forward by the movie that these firms only ever targeted their counterparts in rival firms is at best a simplification and at worst a glamorization of what they did.
“Often hooligans would simply pick off hapless away supporters who got lost in a strange city. If Pompey lost a match, hooligans would often run riot through the city vandalizing property and beating up any rival fans they could find, or failing that, anyone who wasn’t white.
“For a good drama about football hooligans, which exposes the hooligan’s links to British neo-nazi groups, I recommend I.D.’ (1995) directed by Philip Davis. I realize that the `stand by your friends whatever’ code that Green Street espouses is appealing, but please don’t confuse this with the mindless thuggery of real football hooliganism.
“I must also take issue with the way you characterize ‘this bizarre world of Brit football fanaticism.’ Football hooligans are not true football fans; they are in it for the violence. If you want a picture of Brit football fanaticism as opposed to hooliganism then check out the original version of Fever Pitch(1997), directed by David Evans.

“As for the movie itself, while the action sequences do have a real energy to them, the flat dialogue scenes in-between fatally hamstring the film. This is best illustrated by the opening scene in Harvard which, as you admit, `isn’t a very convincing beginning,’ and by the clunky scenes in which Matt Buckner (Elijah Wood) is tutored in cockney-rhyming slang. These scenes had the London preview audience chuckling and shaking their heads.
“The other problem is Elijah Wood’s inability to be convincing in his fight scenes. Although his character starts out as useless, after he becomes a seasoned member of the Green Street Elite he is supposed to have toughened up and learned to give and take a punch. However Wood continues to flail around in an embarrassing fashion in all his fight scenes, which may explain the director’s decision to shoot most of his fight in slo-mo (to try and disguise this).
“I agree that Charlie Hunnam is the real star of Green Street. He certainly makes the film watchable. I was surprised to learn that he is British though as I had assumed from the movie that he was Australian. His is a charismatic performance, but his London accent frequently slips into a bizarre almost Aussie accent. I guess your have to have lived in London for a few years in order to pick up on this, but I was wincing in places.
“Alan Clarke’s The Firm is a great film, which I strongly urge you to see. Like Scum it acknowledges the attraction that violence holds for some young men while simultaneously exposing the rotten culture that spawned it.” — Clive Ashenden
“Alan Clarke’s The Firm, which you mentioned in your piece about Green Stret hooligans, is a superb portrait of hooligan life (and probably more relevant, as the `80s were the pinnacles of English football hooliganism), featuring Gary Oldman’s best performance, before he took a liking for expensive scenery.

The U.S. release one-sheet (l.) and the British release version (r.)

“I’m not sure about the Green Street Hooligans flick. During the `70’s and `80s English hooligans were the worst — real scum who killed and maimed across Europe. Since all English clubs were banned following the Heysel tragedy, English football has come a long way, with a more family atmosphere at the grounds and less trouble at matches.
“For those who don’t recall, the Heysel disaster of May 29, 1985, led to the deaths of 39 fans and a five-year blanket ban on English clubs in European football.
“Juventus fans were given tickets adjacent to the Liverpool contingent who began by throwing stones and bottles, then charged the very thin blue line of under-equipped, poorly trained Belgian police. A section of Liverpool followers then stampeded towards the rival fans.
“A retaining wall separating the Liverpool followers from Juventus supporters in sector ‘Z’ collapsed under the pressure and many were crushed or trampled when panicking Juventus fans tried to escape.
“Thirty-nine Italian and Belgian fans died and hundreds were injured.
“I’ve been abroad and in the company of English hooligans. There isn’t a family/loyalty/ love equation going on. They use the cover of football support and rivalry to justify fighting with anyone and everyone who crosses their path. I’ve seen cars packed with holidaying families assaulted by `fans’ for the crime of hooting their horn.
“It’s just a booze-fueled, pack-animal mentality. Nothing more, nothing less.

The lads doing what they know, love and do best in Lexi Alexander’s Green Street Hooligans (Odd Lot, 9.9)

“Do we need another hooligan movie? I think not. No matter how hard any director tries, these films ultimately serve to sate those who wish to glorify and glamourize the worst side of our national sport.” — Dylan Glover, UK.
“The Firm, like a lot of Alan Clarke’s work, was commissioned by the BBC. This is when the Beeb wasn’t afraid to premier new, once-off dramas by Mike Leigh, Ken Loach et al. on a weekly basis and around the time when the broadcaster fell afoul of the establishment with its astonishing Sunday night drama one-two punch of Alan Bleasdale’s The Monocled Mutineer and Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective.
“It’s been a long while since I saw the firm but Gary Oldman’s portrayal of the main protagonist, Bex, really made punters and critics sit up and take notice. Shot on video, there’s little overtly cinematic about The Firm but its status as a cautionary tale of the Thatcher era — moneyed-up working class males in a more feminist-minded era take to soccer hooliganism as proxy warfare — stands unchallenged.
“I recall that The Firm (never released theatrically) played well across ages and interests because it didn’t stint on the violence, its origins or its consequences. Leach/Loach repertory player, Lesley Manville, was also top notch as Bex’s wife. Oldman himself was profoundly influenced by Clarke when he made his directorial debut, The War Zone, and it’s just a shame he’s been unable to find a script of its ilk since them.” — Neil King.

Grabs

Bloor Street facing east, downtown Toronto — Wednesday, 9.1, 11:25 am.

Coming into Toronto on Continental Airlines — Tuesday, 8.30, 12:55 pm.

Adjacent to Metro North train platform in Bethel, Connecticut — Sunday, 8.28, 1:40 pm.

Lexington and 54th — Monday, 8.29, 6:50 pm.

Brill building lobby (reverse angle of shot that ran in last Friday’s column).

Has the ripple effect of the failure of The Island extended to the sales of “Island Puma” shoes that Ewan MacGregor and others wore in the film? I have no hard data to back this up, but I do know that Puma’s of this sort sell for $90 or $100 bucks, and yet these black-and-white Puma’s were being offered on sale last week on 14th Street…these plus another pair for $80.

Late in arriving, but very well said by Elbert Ventura in The Australian: “Although everyone knows what they’re in for — ‘No nudity…no violence…unspeakable obscenity,’ as the tagline states — there is uncertainty about whether we all share the same threshold for outrage. At the outset, the first mentions of taboo sexual acts inspire a smattering of sniggers. As the movie keeps going and the language, impossibly, gets worse, the guffaws become less muted, the atmosphere less tentative. And on it goes, until, eventually, there is a collective mood of giddy surrender, as the Boschian depravities multiply at a rate too fast for sensibilities to be checked and upheld. That feeling of conspiratorial mischief gives The Aristocrats its giddy kick.”

Curtis Hanson’s In Her Shoes (20th Century Fox, 10.7) is on the longish side (a bit more than 140 minutes) but don’t let that temper your enthusiasm, says an overseas distribution guy who saw it a couple of weeks ago. “I really, really liked it,” he says. “It’s very well-written” — Jennifer Weiner’s book has been adapted by Erin Brockovich‘s Susannah Grant — “and down to the bone and extremely well made. Women will absolutely love it because they will recognize themselves in any of the three main characters.” He was speaking of Cameron Diaz’s flakey irresponsible sister, Toni Collette’s irked-at-Diaz, much more conservative older sister, and Shirley MacLaine’s grandmother whom Diaz goes to visit at an old folks’ home in Florida. “But guys will love it as well,” he says. “It’s extremely well acted and very well directed by Hanson, and it’s clear that Fox gave Hanson the autonomy to adapt the way he saw fit because it sticks very close to the Weiner book. Fox had a plan to release it in May or June, but it was so well received in research screenings they decided to hold it back for awards season. There is definitely, I feel, a Best Suporting Actress nomination in the wings for Shirley MacLaine, partly because she’s so honest in how she looks her age.” In Her Shoes is playing the Toronto Film Festival, of course, so we’ll be seeing soon enough.

I don’t care that much one way or the other, but the new Bob Iger-led Disney has apparently smoothed things over with Pixar and the word is that reps for the companies are negotiating the fine points of a fresh new deal, so it looks like Pixar and Disney won’t be separating after all. Take it with a grain, but that’s I’m hearing.

It’s ironic to say the least that with the divorce between Harvey and Bob Weinstein and Disney about to be over and done with and in effect, the talk is now that Disney is finalizing a deal to handle overseas distribution for four films made by Bob and Harvey’s new outfit, The Weinstein Co., and that the deal will be signed within the next two or three months. The Weinstein Co. films we’re speaking of are Derailed, Breaking and Entering, Scary Movie 4 and the Sin City sequel.

What’s more pathetic? Director Martin Campbell and producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli still trying to figure out which semi-acceptable (i.e., not a complete unknown, and faux-studly in the Sean Connery mold) candidate they should sign and turn into the next James Bond, or the fact that journalists are still writing articles about this embarassing process? The latest indication of the latter is this article (“Search for a Swoonmaker”) from Australia’s The Age, which actually proposes casting Hugh Grant. Nobody ever mentions it, but there is only one trying-to-cast-the-new-James-Bond story, really, and it’s an oldie: nobody who knows the score or has anything career-wise on the ball wants to work with Wilson and Broccoli. They are stoppers and turkeys and micro-managers and caretakers of the lowest order, and this, I’m told, is at least one reason why Hugh Jackman, “evidently at the instigation of his wife, actor Deborah-Lee Furness,” according to the Age story, is reported to have refused a deal to make three Bond movies.

I’ve just come from Bennett Miller’s Capote (Sony Pictures Classics, 9.30). It’s an amazingly rich and resonant thing. It’s largely about stillnesses and intimations, and yet it’s very precise and careful in conveying a defining chapter in the life of author Truman Capote. It lets the actors — particularly the great Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who plays Capote — tell us what we need to feel and understand. I know someone who’s seen it and has said he’s not sure about Hoffman being a likely Best Actor nominee. (Although he’s very enthused about Clifton Collins, Jr.’s performance as Perry Smith, the sad-eyed Clutter family murderer, and a possible Best Supporting Actor nomination.) All I can say about Hoffman not necessarily being a shoo-in is the word “please.” No, I can say more than that: there’s a certain vividness of detail and a certain pitch to live-wire performances that turn up in Oscar-bait movies, and, trust me, Hoffman’s is one of these. It screams Oscar worthiness. It’s a summation, a crescendo…a master stroke. (Jesus, that sounded a bit like a quote from “Eric” something-or-other, the “publicist’s friend” who used to be a regular fixture in the opening pages of the National Lampoon in the late ’70s.) I’ll get into this more next week but Hoffman is so fantastic and rock-solid delightful I’ve decided to go see Capote again as soon as possible. I think there’s another screening on Monday evening…

It doesn’t aspire to high art or try for the sort of emotional engagement that makes you choke up, but Lexi Alexander‘s Green Street Hooligans (Odd Lot, 9.9) is nonetheless a very intense emotional hybrid thing, which is to say a sports movie and a bloody gang-violence movie mashed into one.

The lads doing what they know, love and do best in Lexi Alexander’s Green Street Hooligans (Odd Lot, 9.9)

I don’t know how well this mostly London-based film is going to do in the States given the exotic milieu and the thuggish attitudes (i.e., the world of boozed-up, ultra-violent British soccer fans), but it’s vibrant and original enough to warrant being seen and grappled with. It sure as shit is an experience and an education.

And it’s absolutely a career springboard for British actor Charlie Hunnam, who steals the show with a second-banana performance as a violent, in some ways immature, soccer fan who is nonetheless man enough to bring a sense of balance and compassion to an otherwise loutish lifestyle.
Hunnam starred in Nicholas Nickleby, and was in Cold Mountain, a Katie Holmes thriller called Abandon and the British TV series Queer as Folk, but who noticed? Now this 25 year-old has punched through.

The superficial tag is to call him a younger Brad Pitt with a Brit accent. What matters is that he conveys an inner groundedness and conviction on top of a sense of basic decency that you find yourself recognizing and responding to right away.

Hunnam is not just the star of Green Street Hooligans — he’s a star waiting to happen. Maybe. If he’s lucky and has the right agent and can do an American accent. (There seems to be some question whether or not he appears in Robert Towne’s Ask the Dust, which will debut at the Tellruide Film Festival in a few days). Whatever happens, he’s got it inside.

Charlie Hunnam

Green Street Hooligans is a story about a young American (Elijah Wood) on a visit to London who gets caught up in the violent world of English soccer fandom by joining a “firm,” which is a term for a gang that asserts and defends the honor of a given soccer team by parading around after soccer matches and confronting other firms and kicking their ribs in, or vice versa.

It sounds repulsive and cro-Magnon on one level, but European guys take soccer (which, of course, they call football) very seriously. And a lot of British working- class dudes are extremely furious about…well, I don’t know what precisely but apparently a lack of opportunity within a still-fairly-restrictive social caste system and having to make do with certain economic terms. I’ve been to London a few times and have felt this. The social-rage levels over there are much more intense among the disenfranchised than they are here.

And there are elements that go with being a firm member…tribal love, loyalty, security…that you’re not ever going to find vegging out in front of a computer or a TV, so there’s something to be said for it.
If you’re at all receptive to the values I’m speaking of and you can roll with fairly realistic depictions of street violence, Green Street Hooligans is affecting in a hormonal, territorial way. If it doesn’t exactly speak to Americans where they live in terms of being avid sports fans, it certainly is different and bracing and a movie to kick around and talk about and send your friends to.

Unless, that is, you happen to be one of those absent-sports-gene types who just doesn’t feel it or get it, in which case it may seem too exotic and what-the-hell?

The U.S. release one-sheet (l.) and the British release version (r.)

I’m kind of in this camp (my favorite spectator sports are tennis and baseball), but I get what the film is putting across and I respect the effort and the craft that Alexander and co-screenwriters Dougie Brimson and Josh Shelov have put into making this world come alive.
The German-born Alexander, a late twentysomething who grew up with football fandom and knows this universe fairly well, has made a name for herself with Hooligans and has already gotten a gig out of it — a thriller for Disney called Labor Day.

When you`re watching Hooligans…I’m sorry, Green Street Hooligans …you have to keep telling yourself, “A young woman directed this, a young woman directed this.” But then Alexander is a former World Kickboxing champion who used to scrap with a Mannheim, Germany, firm for three years, so…

Green Street Hooligans won both the grand jury prize and the audience award for best feature at the South by Southwest festival last March, which should indicate something.

(It used the original British title of Hooligans at that Austin venue, and I can’t quite understand why the distributor, Odd Lot Releasing, feels that adding the words Green Street makes the film more appealing to U.S. audiences.)

Wood’s character, a Harvard journalism major named Matt Buckner, is the audience’s tour guide into this bizarre world of Brit football fanaticism. He gets into it by getting kicked out of Harvard only three weeks or so before graduation when his snotty fortunate-son roommate arranges for him to take the rap for cocaine found in their dorm suite.

(This isn’t a very convincing beginning. In Josh Shelov’s original script Matt gets the boot after he and some classmates are accused of having cheated on an exam, and he is specifically ousted because his friends don’t stand up for him — an issue of loyalty that is dealt with later in the film.)

Matt flies from Logan to London to visit his sister Shannon (Claire Forlani), who’s married to a steady-seeming guy with a vaguely pissy attitude named Steve (Marc Warren). But Matt has arrived on a day when Steve is taking Shannon to see Chicago in the West End, so he’s temporarily placed in the care of Steve’s wild-assed brother, Pete (Hunnam).

Suspicious of this wimpy-looking yank, Pete reluctantly takes Matt to his local pub to meet his crew, who are called the GSE — i.e., Green Street Elite, a two-fisted firm devoted to the West Ham soccer…I mean football team.

Matt is regarded with some distance but then wins the respect of the firm when the GSE gets into a street fight with another firm and he throws himself into battle with real ferocity.

I had trouble with watching this at first, with Wood being so small and sensitive-seeming with those big watery eyes of his. But then I understand and sympathize with his having wanted to de-wimpicize and add some machismo to his persona after playing Frodo in the Rings films. (Has there ever been a more dewy-eyed, super-weenyish lead character in a major franchise?)

Trouble arises when a GSE member named Bovver (Leo Gregory) uncovers evidence that suggests (without actually proving) that Matt may be an undercover journalist secretly writing a story about the firm. This leads to all kinds of betrayals and soul-searchings and double-backs, and eventually the GSE gang going up against an especially hated firm whose leader has been nursing a particular rage against Pete’s family for years.

Hunnam again…seemingly two or three years ago.

It’s not hard to step back in the middle of all this and ask yourself, “Why don’t these guys just chill and pull back from this stupid-ass gang attitude that necessitates getting into fights all the time?” It seems so primitive and stupid and unenlightened, etc. I understood the meaning of it and felt it to a certain extent, but it wasn’t exactly coursing through my veins.

Then I read Lexi Alexander’s explanation for the behavior of these guys (who are legion over Europe), and I started to feel it a bit more. As I mentioned earlier, she was part of a firm in Mannheim, Germany, for three years (accepted by the males because of her black belt kick-boxing abilities) and knows the turf.

“Reliable. Protective. Loyal. Consistent. That’s what I remember most about the firm…which was more than you could say about any of our parents,” she writes. “The firm was our family. What we missed at home, we found in each other..in our firm. The riots were about proving our love, because obviously a bunch of guys don’t walk around telling each other, ‘I love you, man.’

“Standing next to your friend when you’re facing thirty guys who want to punch your face in — that’s love.

“Coming back for somebody who fell or was left behind, despite the fact that you’re most likely going to get your ass kicked — that’s love.
“Watching your mates out of the corner of your eye in a fight, and making sure you come to [their] rescue when needed — that’s love.
“Getting arrested and not remembering anyone’s name when the cops question you — that’s love.”

The message of this film, she says, is never abandon a friend when the chips are down.

Green Street Hooligans director Lexi Alexander, star Elijah Wood at Austin’s Draft House after South by Southwest screening last March.

“When your friend is sick, don’t run. When your friend has a crisis, don’t run. When your friend is going through a streak of bad luck, don’t run. When your friend is being treated unjustly, stand behind him/her, or better yet, stand in front. And when you become successful, don’t leave your friends behind.”

That gets me. I know that if I had a dollar for every fair-weather friend I’ve ever had, I could buy a new 100 gig computer. I know I could certainly use a friend or two with a “firm” attitude. Couldn’t we all?
On the other hand, I haven’t punched or even shoved anyone since I was in the seventh grade. And I need my fingers to be agile and unswollen because I have to type all the time. And British blokes can afford to lose a couple of teeth now and then because they have a good national health care system to turn to — I don’t.

There’s a 1988 Gary Oldman film called The Firm (dir: Alan Clarke) that covers the same territory. Here’s the Amazon page for a buyable Alan Clarke DVD package that includes The Firm. I hear it’s strong and worth seeing. Anyone…?

Toronto Feed

“I read your mention about showing caution when it comes to Michael Caton Jones and particularly his Shooting Dogs, which will show at the Toronto Film Festival.
“Well, I saw it in Cannes and it’s very good — a decent, solid drama about the Rwanda massacre of ’94. It’s a fuck-Schindler-Benigni kind of film. No heroes, no innocent little girls, no redemption. And the carnage is great.
“I’ve read ‘A Time for Machetes,’ the Jean Hatzfeld book about the massive killings, and MCJ was pretty precise about a lots of things.

Hugh Dancy, John Hurt in Michael Caton Jones’ Shooting Dogs.

“Otherwise…
“Cronenberg’s History of Violence, as you know, is splendid. This thing grows in your brain (nyuk-nyuk) many days after the screening. I loved it. You have to see it again.
“Free Zone: Crap. Arghh. A cheater. Kiarostami without the ideas, Panahi without the balls. Step aside, you don’t need this.
“Cache: Amazing. Dry, cool, disturbing. Did you saw Haneke’s Code Unknown, which was one of the major influences on the 21 Grams narrative? This thing has the same eerie feeling. It’s funny, it works like a twin film with the Cronenberg piece. Besides, Auteuil and Binoche are the best married couple I ever seen in the screen in years. They just nail the atmosphere of ten-years-of-marriage in a way that Kidman-Cruise-Kubrick never did.
“L’ Enfant: It’s not as good as Rosetta, but…hmmm, I don’t remember anything good as Rosetta, so…nut it’s very good, it’s worth a look and the only problem is the age of the principal actor. I will leave you to discover on your own what I mean by this.” — Daniel Villalobos, Santiago, Chile.

Just Six

“Dunno if you get the Encore cable channels but Stuart Samuels’ Midnight Movies doc, which is playing Toronto, has been airing there all month.
“It’s an interesting movie that I caught late one night, and while I had hoped it would cover a broad spectrum of films it actually focuses on just six films — El Topo, Night of the Living Dead, Eraserhead, Pink Flamingos, The Harder They Come and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
“While it’s something I enjoyed watching on TV, and I like five of the six movies, I would’ve felt a little let down if I’d seen it in a theater. It’s not bad, it just didn’t tell me much that I didn’t already know. Still, I always enjoy John Waters interviews and this one has plenty.” — Neil Harvey.

Grabs

Thursday, 8.25, 7:50 pm.

Fifth Avenue strollers from various walks of American life and of different faiths and political persuasions contemplating the notion of being gay and up for action — Friday, 8.26, 4:20 pm. I took a series of these photos, and for nearly 30 seconds an older woman and her daughter — tourists, I was fairly certain — who happened to be approaching stood to the side and waited for me to finish. It didn’t occur to them that someone shooting a street scene might be cool with a woman or two walking in front of the camera just as he/she snaps a photo. It could make for a more interesting shot…who knows? But this didn’t occur to them, and so they stood there for almost 30 seconds waiting for me to finish. That’s mainstream America for you. Very polite.

Sixth Avenue and 47th Street, or something like that — 8.25, 5:45 pm.

While speed-marching over to Dolby Screening Room (1350 Ave. of Americas) to see Lord of War — 8.25, 5:42 pm.

Iraqi War 101

“I believe you’re familiar with our Iraq doc Gunner Palace. Last week I devoured your column about the upcoming slate of 9/11 and terror films. It was a needed piece. For me especially, as the theme of reality vs. fiction has been at the top of my mind lately.
“Last May I was invited to a DGA panel discussion where they screened parts of Gunner Palace ‘against’ Iraq-themed episodes of ER and JAG as well as the pilot for Bochco’s Over There. Without going into critic mode, I must say it was surreal to sit in a theater watching fictional scenes from a reality that I was preparing to return to in ten days.
“In the last six months, GP has become something of an Iraq War 101 for creative execs. As you must know, there are at least 10 Iraq projects floating around and development people are looking for interesting takes on Iraq, so every so often we get a call.
“In the beginning I was resistant to the whole idea of fiction — that is, until I had the experience of trying to market a distinct reality to a tabloid nation. We’ve had a fantastic run with GP –I’ve only been home six weeks since January — and the film has been held up as emblematic, but we’ve also been keenly aware of both an audience disconnect and war fatigue.

“However, at the same time, I’ve sensed that the disconnect comes largely from an emotional inability to relate to the subject, a faraway reality, and I’ve perceived a certain hunger to understand the war beyond the rants of pundits.
“Your 9/11 piece raised interesting questions. In regards to this ongoing war, I’ve asked myself, when is soon too soon? Perhaps now is the time — and the public doesn’t need a decade for collective memory to simmer — rather, perhaps there is an urgency to get it right, to tell it like it is.
“I found this Roger Ebert quote the other day:
“‘Whether we are for the war or against it, we all know it is a terribly complicated struggle. There is a desperate need in this country for a film that will depict the war in honest terms.”
“I have not been one for emotional button-pushing, especially about a war that has become all too personal to me, however, as flawed as fiction often is, it has the ability to evoke very real emotions. The Deer Hunter comes to mind. Inaccurate? Without a doubt — down to the last detail — but it captured the emotional essence of an experience. From another war, another time, came The Battle of Algiers — fiction, yes, but a fiction so steeped in reality that it was banned in France. Something to aspire to…no?
“So I surrender to fiction and the urge to at least get it right, to answer Ebert’s call to arms, remembering what a 19 year-old soldier had to say about his experience in GP: ‘For y’all this is just a show, but we live in this movie.” — Mike Tucker

Out There

“Those Walk the Line wildpostings are all over San Francisco too. I saw them the other day and thought, isn’t that opening like months from now? I really like the look of it, and the heavy use of graphics over photos. Seems unorthodox for a biopic.” — Tom Kelly, San Francisco, CA.

Grabs 2

You don’t have to put a caption under every damn photo.

The lobby of the famous Brill building on Broadway and 48th (or is it 49th?) I took this last night around 7:35 pm, just after slipping out of a preview screening of Pride and Prejudice upstairs. A romantic breakup scene in Alexander MacKendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success was filmed right here roughly 48 years ago. Susie Hunsecker (Susan Harrison), terrified sister of ruthless columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), has just called it quits with jazz musician Steve Dallas (Martin Milner). Dallas and his manager Frank D’Angelo (Sam Levene) walk down the hallway and out of the building as a glum-faced Susie leans against the wall near the elevators. As they’re standing outside on Broadway, Milner says to Levene, “Look inside and tell me if she’s still standing there.” Levene looks. “She’s still standing there,” he says.

This newspaper ad on behalf of Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man is apparently aimed at the March of the Penguins crowd. You almost want to pet this guy. Timothy Treadwell, the “star” of Grizzly Man did, in fact, pet a few until one day…

A block or two west of CBGB’s — Sunday, 8.21, 4:40 pm.

Thursday, 8.25, 5:55 pm.

Tracking says the biggest earner this weekend — oddly, given the buzz — will be Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm. Awareness last weekend was at 76%, definite interest was at 41% and those saying it would be their first choice stood at 17%.