wired

The only gay cowboy joke I’ve half-chuckled at since Brokeback Mountain opened some eight and a half weeks ago is that one in The New Yorker…know it? Shows a guy lying in bed and working on a laptop, and he’s saying to a guy in long johns and cowboy hat standing nearby, “And what if I don’t want to be Jack or Ennis?” This 1.25 piece by USA Today‘s Susan Wloszczyna is one of the best Brokeback Mountain cultural-impact readings I’ve come across since the film opened. It’s basically about how and why the spread of Brokeback jokes across the country means Middle America has accepted it. With $42 million in the till as of last Monday and last week’s Golden Globe wins, more and more industry watchers are saying that Ang Lee’s film could reach $100 million between next Tuesday’s (1.31) Academy Awards nominations and the 3.5 Oscar telecat. “When [Utah exhibitor] Larry Miller pulled it, he won the Oscar for it,” comic and oscar joke-writer Bruce Vilanch says. “It didn’t have any effect on the [film’s box-office] and only made it stronger.”

I think it’s fair to at least ask if there’s such a thing as the Curse of Ryan Gosling. Excepting The Notebook and The Believer, every film Gosling has made has been very well chosen — i.e., hip, smart, serious, indie-level…but they’ve all turned out a bit precious and unsatisfying. Murder by Numbers, The United States of Leland, Stay, The Slaughter Rule…all smart-and-sensitive, all problem movies. Which is why I haven’t yet gone to see Gosling’s latest, Half Nelson, whcih I’ve heard is pretty good. I’m getting used to his type of film and I’m sorry but I’m starting to cool off.

Right at Your Door, an economically produced, realistically scrappy drama about what happens when a bunch of terrorist “dirty bombs” are exploded around Los Angeles, has allegedly been picked up for theatrical distribution by Lionsgate. You didn’t hear it from me.

David Poland is too much of a hard-ass in his critique of Kirby Dick‘s This Film Is Not Yet Rated, but he makes some good points here and there. One thing I felt absolutely should have been acknowledged in Dick’s film (but isn’t) is the fact that filmmakers routinely look for ways to push the envelope in terms of sexually kinky and/or aberrant behavior, or, in the Michael Bay/Robert Rodriguez realm, for new ways to depict ultra-violent, super-stylish action. They need to do this so moviegoers won’t be bored — we all know they do this — but no one in Dick’s film mentions this even in passing…even as a joke.

Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth, which I saw this afternoon, is about as succulent and brilliant as a “spinach documentary” — i.e., one that’s very good and nutritional to watch — can possibly be. It’s basically a documentary presentation of Al Gore’s global-warming slide show, which the former President candidate and vice-president has been presenting to audiences around the globe for the last few years. Everyone on the planet needs to see this film, even if they think they know everything there is to know about the harm being done to this planet. Gore’s teaching style is folksy, straight and quite personable….if only he had been this charming during the 2000 Presidential election. I’ll have more to say about this doc tomorrow morning (probably), but in the meantime go to this Gore-sponsored website to research the facts. Participant Productions, Lawrence Bender and Laurie David produced.

Here’s Roger Ebert saying more than a few flattering things about Jeff Lipsky’s Flannel Pajamas, which I am now committed to seeing at the Park City Racquet Club tomorrow evening (Thursday), no matter what.

The last Word item I tapped out was yesterday (1.24) around 1 pm. This feels like a losing battle, but I’m about to see The Darwin Awards at the 6 pm Eccles show…well, I might make it there…and poor Chris Penn, one of the costars, is dead at 43. And of course no one is going to voice the thought that first came to mind when they heard the news, including me. But we all know it’s unnatural for a 43 year-old body to expire without a contributing factor or two. Very sad news in more ways than one. Here’s to Nice Guy Eddie…sorry.

I went straight from Tuesday night’s God Grew Tired Of Us after-party to the Eccles screening of Jonathan Demme’s Neil Young: Heart of Gold at 9:30 pm. Obviously in the class of Demme’s Stop Making Sense, it’s a very clean and classy concert film, which means, in this instance, a plain but open-hearted immersion into Young’s music — or rather his latest album, “Prairie Wind”, which a knowledgable ex-music critic tells me is Young’s best since “Harvest Moon”. Demme’s film starts with a little background conversation among the band members, but it’s mainly a straight-ahead filming of Young’s two-night set at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium last August. No crazy cutting — the camera just watches and listens and considers the purity of Young’s art and heart. The feeling of calm and centered-ness is a perfect compliment to Young’s “Wind” songs, which I liked quite a lot. And Young’s commentary between songs is appealing for its straight folksy honesty. But I have to be honest here: this is an AARP concert film. The tunes are country-ish, easy and mellow, and there’s a lyric in one of his songs that mentions how “it’s fading now”…and all I could think upon hearing this was, “Speak for yourself, Neil!” Young has never given a damn about looking like some flash rock star and hail to that integrity, but almost all of his longtime band members are settled and paunchy-looking with white hair and sagging turkey necks, and I don’t care how this makes me sound but I don’t identify with Geezer Rock. Just call me one of those “Hey Hey, My My”-type guys.

I should have posted this yesterday, but Munich screenwriter Tony Kushner has countered the criticisms of the film’s political opponents with this very intelligent response, which appeared in the 1.22 L.A. Times. And Steven Spielberg has finally let go with some anger at these criticisms through an interview he gave to a writer for the German magazine Der Spiegel. Now, if just one of them had addressed the why’s and wherefore’s of that sex scene intercut with Munich massacre footage…

New York Times reporter Sharon Waxman got in touch with the Little Miss Sunshine principals — producer Jon Turtletaub and Cinetic Media’s John Sloss — and wrote this comprehensive piece about the five-year effort to finance the film and the 10-hour effort to sell it last Friday night and early Saturday morning. The victor was Fox Searchlight. The selling price was $10.5 million “plus 10 percent of all gross revenues on the film, a hefty figure that set tongues wagging.” Sunshine will hit theatres sometime this summer.

Hollywood Elsewhere’s Sundance coverage slowed to a near-total halt on Sunday, 1.22. This has been a pleasant but (so far) unexceptional festival…everyone is in agreement about this. Not so hot…nothing really igniting….shoulder-shrugging. And with Sunday’s wake-up downshifting and not seeing this or that allegedly mezzo-mezzo movie seemed like a permissible way to play it. No…inspired! Woke up late and kinda groggy after crashing at 3 am…wrote a column, missed Stewart Copeland’s Police doc, Everyone Stares…saw Freida Lee Mock’s straightforward but pleasingly passionate Tony Kushner doc, Wrestling with Angels; went to a Women in Film gathering at the River Horse; decided to blow off seeing Neil Burger’s The Illusionist and Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep…later, shine it, grab a salad…get back on the horse tomorrow (i.e., today).

I’m told that the increasingly eccentric Ralph Nader woke up this morning, took a shower, watered the plants, walked the dog around the block and decided be’d better not attend the Sundance Film Festival, and therefore Monday’s press conference for Henriette Mantel and Stephen Skovan’s An Unreasonable Man, a doc about Nader, has been cancelled as Nader “will no longer be able to attend,” according to an IDPR press release.