It turns out that the Wikipedia-supplied running time of Cameron Crowe‘s We Bought A Zoo (20th Century Fox, 12/23) is pretty far off the mark. It’s not 90 minutes but roughly 124 minutes, according to a Fox source. That’s not an official running time, but it’ll be in that general vicinity (i.e., maybe a bit shorter) when all is said and done.
Yesterday I should have posted Xan Brooks’ Guardian comments, dated 11.14, on Meryl Streep‘s “astonishing, all-but-flawless” performance as former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (Weinstein Co., 12.30). He also notes that while the film “prints the legend,” it “keeps the dissent on spartan rations…it’s a movie that gives us Thatcher without Thatcherism.”
Streep’s performance is “a masterpiece of mimicry which re-imagines Thatcher in all her half-forgotten glory,” Brooks writes. “Streep has the basilisk stare; the tilted, faintly predatory posture. Her delivery, too, is eerily good — a show of demure solicitude, invariably overtaken by steely, wild-eyed stridency.
“The film provides glimpses of a blustering Michael Foot, and archive footage from the poll tax riots. At one stage angry protesters slap on the window of the heroine’s limo to tell her she’s ‘a monster’. Yet there’s little sense of the outside world, the human cost, or the ripple effect of divisive government policies.
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd from an Abi Morgan script, The Iron Lady “opts for a breezy, whistle-stop tour through the unstable nitroglycerin of Thatcher’s life and times. The tone is jaunty and affectionate, a blend of Yes Minister and The King’s Speech, fuelled by flashbacks that bob us back through authorized history.”
It means absolutely nothing…okay, it means a little something but next to nothing, really, that seven Gold Derby “Oscarologists” — Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, Fox News‘ Tariq Khan, WENN’s Kevin Lewin, Yahoo Movies‘ Matt McDaniel, the Village Voice‘s Michael Musto and GD’s Tom O’Neil and Paul Sheehan — are intuiting that War Horse is the most likely Best Picture winner.
One of the above might have seen War Horse, maybe, but I’d rather not think about that.
11 Oscar-watching hotshots (myself among them) are standing by The Descendants, and that means something because everyone’s seen it. Eight are picking The Artist and one has chosen Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. And that’s the way it is on Monday, November 14th, 2011.
Robert Weide‘s Woody Allen: A Documentary arrived today. Tomorrow or the next day Criterion Blurays of Twelve Angry Men and Rushmore will be delivered. The L.A. press day for The Descendants is tomorrow afternoon, and the Academy screening that night. Wednesday night is either the Breaking Dawn all-media or my second attempt with Michael Roskam‘s Bullhead. A chat with David Cronenberg and a screening of W.E. are on Thursday; interviews with Olivia Colman and Michael Shannon on Friday.
Tyrannosaur star Olivia Colman is here in Los Angeles for a week, doing interviews and whatnot. Two significant articles about Tyrannnosaur/Colman ran yesterday in the LA Times (written by Mark Olsen) and NY Times (written by Dennis Lim).
Quote #1 from Olsen’s piece: “‘This is not social realism,” director Paddy Considine said at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. “I’m saying, ‘Here are these people. These are their circumstances. There are the worlds they are from, and this is a love story about the people you walk past in the street. Those people you see at the local shop have got a story.'”
And quote #2: “It never felt like we were unsafe — it never felt like we were doing anything other than pretending,” said Colman, best known in Britain as the star of television comedies, on the phone from her home in South London. ‘But I’m very pleased if it looks real and upsetting to people.'”
You want upsetting? I was upset…well, a bit surprised when Colman declined my invitation to bring her to tomorrow night’s Academy screening of The Descendants. I’d envisioned snapping a shot of her with George Clooney. Ah, well.
I’m looking around for a PDF of The Longest Cocktail Party, Jesse Armstrong‘s screenplay adaptation of Richard DiLello’s 1973 book about the gradual breakup of the Beatles from ’68 to ’70, otherwise known as the Apple downswirl period. Michael Winterbottom will reportedly direct it sometime next year. Actors who don’t really look or sound like John, Paul, George and Ringo will most likely be cast.
It was during a Toronto Film Festival gathering for Albert Nobbs that I casually mentioned to costar Janet McTeer that her performance as Hubert the house painter is more commanding and magnetic than Glenn Close‘s titular performance. McTeer stiffened and said nothing, and so I shifted over to another topic. It felt impolite on some level to step on Close’s toes.
But now Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson has flat-out said the unmentionable in a headline: “Janet McTeer Talks Stealing Albert Nobbs from Glenn Close.” So I guess the cat is out of the bag now. The only problem is that you can’t really hear McTeer in Thompson’s two YouTube clips.
I tightened the strings and strummed a few haphazard chords. For what it’s worth it’s a passable-sounding thing, and the dark-wood varnish and the painted flowers and lettering are attractive.
Yesterday morning Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino and I kicked it all around — Tintin, Oscar-Ratner debacle, Descendants, etc.. Here’s a non-iTunes, stand-alone link.
The new Entertainment Weekly says there are 56 significant films yet to be released this year. By my count there are 37, and if you further whittle the list down by the likelihood of a film (or a creative contributor to that film) being award-worthy, you’re left with 25. Here’s my list with the letters AW signifying award-worthy:
November 16 (1): The Descendants (AW).
November 18 (4): Another Happy Day (AW); The Lie (limited); The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1; Tyrannosaur (AW).
November 23 (6): A Dangerous Method (AW); The Artist (AW); Hugo (AW); The Muppets; My Week with Marilyn (AW); Rampart (AW).
December 2 (6): Coriolanus (NY, LA one- week Oscar run; wider on 1.20.12) (AW); Knuckle; The Lady; Outrage; Shame (AW); Sleeping Beauty.
December 9 (4): Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (AW); W.E. (NY, LA: one-week Oscar run — Feb. 3rd wide); We Need to Talk About Kevin (AW); Young Adult (AW).
December 16 (4): Carnage (AW); Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel; Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol (IMAX; wide on 12.21); Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.
December 21 (4): The Adventures of Tintin; Albert Nobbs (AW), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (AW); Pina (AW).
December 23 (2): In the Land of Blood & Honey (AW); We Bought a Zoo (AW…maybe…that Disney-family vibe is worrisome).
December 25 (2): Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (wide on 1.20) (AW); War Horse (AW).
December 28 (1): Pariah (AW).
December 30 (2): A Separation (AW); The Iron Lady (AW).
December TBA (1): The Flowers of War (possibly AW).
Comic-book illustrator and noir-style film director Frank Miller has dug himself a grave and is now lying flat in the mud and waiting for the dirt. I always thought Miller was an aesthetic lightweight and a sleazy masturbatory noir fetishist, but now that he’s shown himself to be a Merle Haggard-style reactionary in terms of his views on the Occupy movement, he’s a dead man.
Frank Miller
The statement that has finished Miller off is contained in a week-old (11.7) posting on his personal blog. (Thanks to TheWrap‘s Lew Harris for passing it along.] He states that “al-Qaeda and Islamicism must be getting a dark chuckle, if not an outright horselaugh, out of [the] vain, childish, self-destructive spectacle” that is, in Miller’s view, the Occupy movement. Is everyone clear on that? The Occupy-ers are giving aid and comfort to Islamic terrorists.
And I love the intellectual eruditon contained in Miller’s statement that the Occupy protests can’t be called a movement “unless the word ‘bowel’ is attached.”
The man is an idiot. A snarling, bearded, fedora-wearing, front-porch primitive. Case closed.
“Everybody’s been too damn polite about this nonsense,” Miller’s 11.7 post began.
“The Occupy movement, whether displaying itself on Wall Street or in the streets of Oakland (which has, with unspeakable cowardice, embraced it) is anything but an exercise of our blessed First Amendment. Occupy is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America.
“Occupy is nothing short of a clumsy, poorly-expressed attempt at anarchy, to the extent that the ‘movement’ — HAH! Some movement, except if the word ‘bowel’ is attached — is anything more than an ugly fashion statement by a bunch of iPhone and iPad-wielding spoiled brats who should stop getting in the way of working people and find jobs for themselves.
“This is no popular uprising. This is garbage. And goodness knows they’re spewing their garbage – both politically and physically – every which way they can find.
“Wake up, pond scum. America is at war against a ruthless enemy.
“Maybe, between bouts of self-pity and all the other tasty tidbits of narcissism you’ve been served up in your sheltered, comfy little worlds, you’ve heard terms like al-Qaeda and Islamicism.
“And this enemy of mine — not of yours, apparently — must be getting a dark chuckle, if not an outright horselaugh — out of your vain, childish, self-destructive spectacle.
“In the name of decency, go home to your parents, you losers. Go back to your mommas’ basements and play with your Lords Of Warcraft. Or better yet, enlist for the real thing. Maybe our military could whip some of you into shape.
“They might not let you babies keep your iPhones, though. Try to soldier on.
“Schmucks.
“FM”
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