wired

Hold on a sec: I’ve just figured a way for the fourth Indiana Jones movie, which has been in and out of development since the early ’90s, to work despite the Harrison Ford aging problem. One glance at Ford in that Firewall one-sheet and your first thought is how old and grandfatherly he seems. How do you write a dashing, thrilling Indy 4 adventure flick when the star is going to be 64 in July and looks every day of it? Conventional solution: turn him into Sean Connery in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade…cast him as the dad/mentor figure opposite some young buck actor who’ll handle all the heavy-duty action moves. But I say “no” to that. You can cast a younger guy alongside Ford, fine…but the running joke is that old, bent-over Indy is stronger, tougher, braver and in better shape than the much-younger guy. In short, ignore the age issue. In fact, go in the other direction. Have Ford do all the grueling action sequences he did in Raiders of the Lost Ark and then some…fake it, CG it, push it, but don’t let him be Grandpappy Amos. That’s it…that’s the fix.

I watched Flight 93 Monday night on A&E, and so did N.Y. Times guy David Carr (a.k.a., “the Bagger“), and so did 5.9 million other good people, giving the A&E channel its largest audience ever since launching in 1984. Decently made but a bit too emotionally emphatic (i.e., too many weeping women), this made-for-cable version of Paul Greengrass’s upcoming feature of the same title (due in April from Universal) reached 2.9 million adults (aged 25 to 54….what happens when you turn 55?…do you roll over and die?), 2.7 million folks in the 18 to 49 age range, and 1 million in the 18 to 34 range…these ages overlap and, uhmm, I don’t get it.

The Santa Barbara Film Festival — orchestrated, massaged, grooved and fine-tuned by the tireless Roger Durling — kicks off tomorrow night (Thursday, 2.2) with a gala showing of Robert Towne’s Ask the Dust (Paramount Classics, 3.10), with Towne and star Salma Hayek attending. (Towne will do a “conversation with” forum at Victoria Hall on Friday, 2.3, at 5:30 pm.) The films are always well-chosen but for me the SBFF is mainly about faces, seminars & panels, parties, blondes and photo-ops. Other creatives visiting Santa Barbara over the next ten days include George Clooney (recipient of the Modern Master Award on Friday evening, 2.3, at the Arlington); Naomi Watts (receiving the fest’s Montecito Award on Saturday, 2.4); directors James Cameron (recipient of the Attenborough Award on Monday, 2.6) and Mike Binder (Centerpiece Gala focus on Tuesday, 2.7); Heath Ledger (Breakthrough Performance honoree on Wednesday, 2.8); Transamerica star Felicity Huffman and History of Violence costar Maria Bello (both participating in a “conversation with” forum) and Capote star Philip Seymour Hoffman receiving the fest’s Riviera Award. The closing night film is Jason Reitman‘s very popular Thank You for Smoking, with Aaron Eckhardt giving his best performance since In The Compnay of Men.

Us magazine critic Thelma Adams about today’s snub of a very deserving Supporting Actress: “Robin Wright Penn delivered the year’s ten tautest dramatic minutes in the underseen Nine Lives, as a pregnant wife whose chance encounter with a former lover in the aisles of an L.A. grocery store shatters her serene existence — and his.” Damn right.

The following allegedly came from Walk the Line star and Best Actress contender Reese Witherspoon, on the subject of today’s Oscar nomination: “I was completely surprised.” No…no. She couldn’t have said that.

The people at 20th Century Fox are said to be totally bummed about Walk the Line not getting a Best Picture nomination, but c’mon…Reese and Joaquin are nominated for their respective acting categories and the film is over $100 million and still climbing. The biopic lost momentum due to its own lack of sway over the last four or five weeks (those Golden Globe awards notwithstanding), but Fox’s Oscar consultant Gregg Brilliant was apparently out-schnorred and out-hobknobbed by Munich consultant Tony Angellotti and Fox’s ad campaign was also out-spent by Universal’s. If Munich had just done what it was supposed to do after it opened and gone away like a bad dog and not kept on like it did, Walk the Line would have probably been Best Picture-nominated.

Flight 93, the made-for-TV 9/11 drama that had its first Arts & Entertainment (A&E) airing last night, wasn’t half bad. Too many babies appeared`in the calls-from-home sequences and too many wives of too many guys on the plane cried and said “I love you”… not in real life, of course, but all that friggin’ crying felt drama- tically tedious to me. Director Peter Markle didn’t make it sufficiently clear about how and when the Flight 93 passengers learned of the other 9/11 attacks that were happening at the same time (this knowledge was what led to their taking back the plane from the terrorist hijackers), and I was losing patience with two or three women who wept and moaned while conferring with the male passengers on cell phones but who also failed to tell them precisely what had happened to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Presumably Bourne Supremacy helmer Paul Greengrass, whose identically titled theatrical version of the same 9/11 tale will open on 4.28, will cool it with this and focus more on Todd “let’s roll” Beamer and the other guys who rushed the bad guys and prevented the plane from crashing into the White House or the Pentagon.

I’m going to risk it and admit to something I’m not proud of, but the following passage in the New York Times coverage of the Goleta postal-worker slaughter made me snicker. This is ghastly…people are dead and families are grieving…but there’s something about the dry prose style of this passage that produced a slight grin: “The attack is the latest in a string of attacks by disgruntled mail workers that has given rise to the term ‘going postal‘ as an indication of frustration exploding into violence in the workplace.” I’m sorry for feeling this way, but somehow this seems like a good topic for a new Werner Herzog documentary.

How did Munich pull off those surprising Best Picture nominations (Picture, Director, Screenplay) after getting shut out with the guilds and BAFTA and being generally up against the wall? I think it came down to Universal spending a shitload of money on advertising. Oscar prognosticator Pete Hammond believes that “spending was certainly a big factor…you saw pretty much a nonstop TV campaign over the last week or two…that`Drudge Report rumor that Universal wasn’t supporting it enough was obviously totally wrong…newspaper ads, trade ads…plus the influence of Oscar consultant Tony Angellotti…the amped-up Munich campaign began a couple of weeks ago was like a wide release. That was certainly a big factor. And you can’t underestimate the power of Steven Spielberg and what the town thinks of him…and the movie was a late bloomer. The Academy was one of the few organizations that really saw it in strength.”

The sound of the other Chris Penn shoe…the one everybody suspected was probably in the wings…is starting to be heard: Page Six is reporting that friends “privately suspect that his death [last week] was caused by drugs. One Penn pal said: ‘Chris fought a battle with drugs his whole life, and it had gotten bad again.'” Why is it when a guy dies too young and too soon, which is almost always due to un-natural causes…why do friends and family always consider it sensitive and respectul to keep mum about why he apparently passed? The one good lesson for others to reflect upon…the one positive thing that a sad and untimely passing might (indirectly) achieve, which would be to to dissuade others from unhealthy indulgence…why is it always deemed hurtful or insensitive when this is delved into?

Newsweek‘s round-table chat with the five directors everyone is assuming will be Oscar-nominated for Best Director — George Clooney (Good Night, and Good Luck), Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain), Bennett Miller (Capote), Paul Haggis (Crash) and Steven Spielberg (Munich) — has some good banter and at least one strong political acknowledgement. “From the end of the first wave of the civil-rights movement, all the way through Watergate, people were constantly talking about what was going on in the country,” says Clooney. “Now it seems that’s happening again. You can sit in a room and have people talk about politics — in Los Angeles, of all places.” Then Lee says, “There seems to be a collective social consciousness.” And Spielberg says, “I think we all have been given our marching orders … Maybe I shouldn’t get into this. [Pause] I just feel that filmmakers are much more proactive since the second Bush administration. I think that everybody is trying to declare their independence and state their case for the things that we believe in. No one is really representing us, so we’re now representing our own feelings, and we’re trying to strike back.” And Newsweek asks, “So Bush has been good for film?” and Spuielberg says, “I wouldn’t just say Bush. The whole neo-conservative movement.” And Clooney says, “Because it’s polarizing. I’m not going to sit up and say, ‘This is how you should think.’ But let’s at least acknowledge that there should be an open debate, and not be told that it’s unpatriotic to ask questions.”

What exactly will constitute an upset or big surprise in terms of Tuesday morning’s Oscar nominations? I’ve been trying to figure that one. I’m not sure I give that much of a shit right now, but I guess I’ll rustle up some enthusiasm starting tomorrow sometime…