Daily

The recently arrived-upon view of several critics and columnists — including Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan, CNN’s J.D. Cargill, Coming Soon‘s Ed Douglas, Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale, EW‘s Dave Karger, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, In Contention‘s Guy Lodge, The Wrap‘s Steve Pond and Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson — is that The Artist is a more likely Best Picture winner than The Descendants.

On one level I understand. They’re saying that the Motion Picture Academy is very easily impressed and a cinch to win over with “entertainment.” They’re saying that a generally pleasing silver-screen bauble and a really cute yappy dog are a hard-to-beat combination. On another level I’m appalled. Even if I believed that The Artist is the strongest Best Picture candidate I wouldn’t predict it on the Gold Derby chart. I couldn’t and wouldn’t.

So many don’t seem to understand the basic prediction equation. Several “experts” saying that they think others will support film X is a way of saying that others should support film X because others are supporting it. The Gold Derby team is aware, surely, that most people are Zeligs at heart.

Comicbookmovie.com has run a quote from legendary comic-book writer Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, From Hell, Watchmen) about Frank Miller‘s notorious quotes about the Occupy movement.

“Well, Frank Miller is someone whose work I’ve barely looked at for the past twenty years,” Moore begins. “I thought the Sin City stuff was unreconstructed misogyny, 300 appeared to be wildly ahistoric, homophobic and just completely misguided. I think that there has probably been a rather unpleasant sensibility apparent in Frank Miller’s work for quite a long time. Since I don’t have anything to do with the comics industry, I don’t have anything to do with the people in it.

“I heard about the latest outpourings regarding the Occupy movement. It’s about what I’d expect from him. It’s always seemed to me that the majority of the comics field, if you had to place them politically, you’d have to say center-right. That would be as far towards the liberal end of the spectrum as they would go. I’ve never been in any way, I don’t even know if I’m centre-left. I’ve been outspoken about that since the beginning of my career. So yes I think it would be fair to say that me and Frank Miller have diametrically opposing views upon all sorts of things, but certainly upon the Occupy movement.

“As far as I can see, the Occupy movement is just ordinary people reclaiming rights which should always have been theirs. I can’t think of any reason why as a population we should be expected to stand by and see a gross reduction in the living standards of ourselves and our kids, possibly for generations, when the people who have got us into this have been rewarded for it. They’ve certainly not been punished in any way because they’re too big to fail.

“I think that the Occupy movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who’s too big to fail. It’s a completely justified howl of moral outrage and it seems to be handled in a very intelligent, non-violent way, which is probably another reason why Frank Miller would be less than pleased with it. I’m sure if it had been a bunch of young, sociopathic vigilantes with Batman make-up on their faces, he’d be more in favor of it. We would definitely have to agree to differ on that one.”

“I am best friends with George [Lucas] and I’m very obedient to the stories that he writes,” War Horse director Steven Spielberg says in a new Entertainment Weekly article. “I’ll fight things I don’t believe in but ultimately if George wants to bring interdimensional beings into Crystal Skull, I will do the best job I possible can to acquit George’s idea and make him proud.”

He creatively defers to a man who’s been renowned since the late ’80s as one of the worst, most hackneyed story conceptualists in movie history? The guy who created Jar-Jar Binks and built a large portion of the first Star Wars prequel around Jake Lloyd, and who later cast Hayden Christensen as Annakin Skywalker? That’s it. Game over.

Plus: Nonsensicalist Tim Queeney reports that “according to a late night phone call from a friend who is high in the Lincoln production team, Spielberg plans to ‘go with his gut’ and make some changes to the historical story of Abraham Lincoln, played in the film by Daniel Day Lewis. Most people probably won’t even notice. Here’s a quick rundown:

“Mary Todd Lincoln: Spielberg has reportedly found the Mary Todd role too ‘downbeat.’ The Todd Lincoln character was dropped and Charlize Theron has been brought in to play Swedish singer Jenny Lind, who falls in love with Lincoln in the movie. The film will show Lind and Lincoln meeting on the ramparts of Ft. Sumter as it is bombarded by Confederate forces at the start of the Civil War in 1861. Lincoln will save Lind by swinging from the fort’s flagpole onto a waiting Union Navy aircraft carrier. Tom Cruise has a uncredited cameo as a fighter pilot who covers Lincoln and Lind’s escape by napalming Rebel batteries at Ft. Moultrie.

“Siege of Petersburg: Spielberg feels a siege with ‘a lot of extras standing around in trenches’ is not cinematic so he has re-imagined the siege as a sunset railroad chase in which Gen. U.S. Grant (played by Sam Worthington) pursues Gen. Robert E. Lee (Chris Hemsworth) in an attempt to win back a magic whiskey bottle, with both generals on handcars crossing rickety trestles and transiting tunnels with lots of steam and improbable light sources.

“Ford’s Theater: Test audiences found the Ford’s Theater assassination ‘a bit dry’ and didn’t like John Wilkes Booth’s use of Latin, so Spielberg shot a new ending with a duel and a lavish musical number. First, Lincoln and Booth square off in a lengthy bare-chested sword fight across the rooftops and bridges of Washington. After Lincoln dispatches Booth, Lincoln and Lind ride chariots down Fifth Avenue in New York City during a ticker tape parade, singing Neil Young‘s ‘Southern Man’ and ending at the foot of the Statue of Liberty as Tom Cruise and a squadron of F/A-18 Super Hornets does a low-level flyover.”

Bill McKinney, who died yesterday at age 80, was a hard-working, well-liked character actor whom many remember for his supporting roles in several Clint Eastwood films of the ’70s and ’80s — Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Gauntlet, Pink Cadillac, etc. But let’s face it — McKinney’s biggest claim to fame is for playing the hilllbilly rapist in Deliverance (’72), more specifically as the guy who sodomized Ned Beatty in the woods while going “wheeeee!”

Bill McKinney (1931 – 2011)

I mean, I’m sorry to put it crudely (if that’s what I’ve done) but that is what McKinney is famous for. I would add that McKinney’s “wheeee!” probably inspired tens of thousands of straight men and women in the ’70s to mimic his “wheeeee!” during lovemaking. I know it caught on to some degree. I myself was with two women who goaded me into this and thought it was kind of kinky-funny. On separate occasions, I mean.

McKenny also had semi-distinctive roles in The Parallax View, Junior Bonner, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, The Shootist, First Blood, Against All Odds, Heart Like a Wheel and The Green Mile. His Wiki bio says he “took up singing in the late 1990s, eventually releasing an album of standards and country & western songs appropriately titled Love Songs from Antri.”

McKinney succumbed to cancer. Condolences to his family and friends.

Yesterday afternoon I saw Angelina Jolie‘s In The Land of Blood and Honey, and liked it a lot. I asked for permission to say a little something and was told nope, the embargo holds…fine. This morning I saw David Fincher‘s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and I liked that too. But I can’t write about it until 12.13. And now I’m sitting in a food court and not arguing with anyone about seating. All is well. Just saying.

Steve McQueen‘s Shame opens limited today. It demands a spinach-eating looksee from all non-Eloi viewers, but hoowee, it’s a bucket of bleak.

Here’s my 9.5. Telluride Film Festival review: “Steve McQueen‘s Shame is a prolonged analysis piece that’s entirely about a malignancy — sex addiction — affecting the main character, and nothing about any chance at transcendence or way into the light.

“Michael Fassbender plays a successful Manhattan guy with a sex-addiction issue. He’s into slamming ham like a vampire is into blood-drinking, minus any emotional intimacy whatsoever. And at the end of the day, all the film does is show you how damaged and deranged he is. The guy is lost, tangled, doomed.

“Act One: Fassbender is one smooth, obsessive, fucked-up dude. Act Two: Fassbender really is a twisted piece of work, you bet. Act Three: Boy, is this guy a mess!

“This is what an art film does — it just stands its ground and refuses to do anything you might want it to do. But Shame has a point, delivered with a methodical intensity, that sinks into your bones. And part of the point is that suppressed memories of incest…nope, I can’t do this.

“But Shame has integrity, and is one of those films, like A Dangerous Method, that you might not like as you watch it but you think about a lot in the hours and days and weeks afterwards.

“The sex scenes are grim and draining and even punishing in a presumably intentional way. Fassbender walks around with his dick hanging out and flopping against his upper thigh, and I suppose it ought to be acknowledged that he’s fairly well hung. Carey Mulligan, who plays his effed-up sister, has (a) a longish nude scene in a shower and (b) a song-singing moment that goes on for three or four minutes.”

Chilly and clinical as it is, it’s all but impossible to not think about Shame, a lot, after it’s over. Failing to see it means hanging your head in shame the next time an intelligent film discussion occurs in your circle.

On 9.30 N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis called Shame “another example of British miserablism, if one that’s been transposed to New York and registers as a reconsideration of the late 1970s American cinema of sexual desperation (Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Hardcore, Cruising, etc.).”

From 11.10: “What if Michael Fassbender’s sex-addict character was called ‘Shame’? And if everyone called him that — all the girls he picks up, his sister (Carey Mulligan), his charmless boss at the office and so on? And what he if struck up a relationship with a 10 year-old kid who lives in his building, and what if the kid found out he was a sex addict and said, ‘I’m ashamed of you, Shame!'”

The Station Agent, The Visitor and Win Win persuaded everyone that director-writer Tom McCarthy is a skillful provider of the same kind of adult relationship or family dramedy, more or less, that Alexander Payne churns out. For my money Win Win, which I first saw at Sundance 2011, is in the same class as The Descendants. They’re both about families in transition, and about ethics, character, parent-child relations and working through hard stuff.

Win Win director-writer Tom McCarthy — Thursday, 12.1, 12:35 pm, Four Seasons hotel.

The reason Win Win isn’t in the current award-season “conversation”, of course, is the fact that (a) Fox Searchlight has distributed them both, and (b) FS made a decision in late 2010 to open Win Win in March 2011, presumably in order not to have two family dramedies playing during the fall-holiday season.

FS obviously decided to bank on The Descendants as the award-season thoroughbred, primarily for two reasons — Payne has acquired more of an accomplished auteur and prestige factor over the last decade, especially since Sideways, and The Descendants has George Clooney in the lead. Win Win‘s Paul Giamatti is a solid adult draw (for people like me, at least) but Clooney is a top-tier, across-the-board star.

As mature and satisfying as Win Win is, Fox Searchlight also had reason to expect that The Descendants might deliver a little more bing-bam-boom with critics and Academy voters.

How do the two films stack up when you apply the old Howard Hawks rule about a successful movie having three great scenes and no bad ones? You tell me.

I sat down with McCarthy at noon today and talked it all out for…oh, roughly 25 minutes or so.

I wrote last January that Win Win “is warm but not sappy, smartly written, very well acted and agreeable all the way. McCarthy is always grade-A, and this is more from the same well. It isn’t quite as good as Little Miss Sunshine — it’s an 8.5 to Sunshine‘s 9 — but it’s a wise, perceptive and affecting little family-relations flick that works just fine. If only more films labelled ‘family-friendly’ were as good as this.

“Paul Giamatti delivers another one of his dependably solid half-Gloomy Gus/half-wise man performances. But for my money Amy Ryan is the most enjoyably on-target. She’s so solid, so real. And Alex Shaffer definitely holds his own.

“Costars include Jeffrey Tambor, Bobby Cannavale and Margo Martindale. McCarthy wrote the screenplay, based on the story by himself and Joe Tiboni. Michael London (Sideways) produced with McCarthy, Mary Jane Skalski and Lisa Maria Falcone.

Paula Patton is the brunette and Lea Seydoux is the blonde, but I had to research that. Anyway, who cares? This Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol fight sequence is cut too fast. It’s all little pieces; no follow-through. Gina Carono‘s fight sequences in Steven Soderberg‘s Haywire (Relativity, 1.20) are much cooler and far more believable.

Read more

Fans of Orson Welles‘ Touch of Evil never mention something that has always seemed odd and repugnant to me. Welles plays a cynical, unshaven and obese police captain named Hank Quinlan…but his appearance is a bit much. He looks like a 60 year-old homeless guy who’s been chain-smoking, guzzling straight whiskey and eating french fries and Haagen-Dazs his entire life, and yet Welles was only 42 when he directed Touch of Evil. 42!

I’ve never read anything about Welles inhaling pasta dishes for two or three months before shooting Evil in 1957 so he’d be as whale-sized as possible. He looks much fatter and saggier than 36 year-old Robert De Niro did when he packed it on for Raging Bull. It makes you wonder what kind of life Welles was living back then. What reasonably healthy 42 year-old today looks even half this gross? The only thing Welles didn’t do in Touch With Evil to make himself more Skid Row-ish was to sprinkle vomit traces on his shirt and tie.

(l.) Welles in Touch of Evil, age 42; (r.) Ten years earlier during filming of The Lady From Shanghai, age 32.

Wells to Lazarus, goodvibe61, reverent & free (update): The photos below dispute your “it was just a fatsuit and fat-face makeup” story. Welles was fairly Quinlan-sized in The Long Hot Summer, which came out in May 1958 also. He may have worn a slight fatsuit prosthetic for Evil, as you claim, but he clearly didn’t need much of one.

(l.) Welles in Evil (l.); in The Long Hot Summer (r.)

Sometime between now and May I’m going to visit Monument Valley for a couple of days, and stay at Goulding’s Lodge. I’ve also decided that however long the drive turns out to be, I’m going to listen to mostly movie soundtracks. Particularly, I’m thinking, Phillip Glass‘s The Fog of War score, which I find curiously soothing. This track especially.

Soundtracks go well with driving because they don’t demand your attention. They’re meant to flavor and complement, not dominate.

Judy Lewis, the secretly-born daughter of Loretta Young and Clark Gable, died six days ago at age 76. Young refused to admit to Lewis, whose last name came from Young’s husband, Tom Lewis, that her father was Gable until 1986, when Lewis was 50 or 51 and Young was 73.

(l.) Judy Lewis, (center) Clark Gable, (r.) Loretta Young.

Lewis was conceived during the making of Call of The Wild, when Young was 22 and Gable, married to Maria Langham, was 34. Lewis was quietly born and sent away to caregivers, and then “adopted” by Young when she was two or thereabouts.

The big giveaway were Lewis’s big ears, which closely resembled her father’s. Her hair always covered them in photos, or at least the ones I’ve been able to find.

Young, a devout Catholic, felt ashamed for having broken the church’s commandment about having a child out of wedlock. It was more important to her to dodge that shame and her fears of condemnation and damnation than to accept what happened and level with her daughter and raise her honestly and supportively without any buried feelings or guilt. Lewis’s book, “Uncommon Knowledge“, portrayed Young as the worst kind of uptight, self-denying hypocrite.