wired

Liam Neeson as Abraham Lincoln? Perfect…not just because of the facial and body-type similarities, but also a look of kindliness in Neeson’s eyes that I’ve noticed in those two or three Matthew Brady portraits of Lincoln. Variety is reporting that Steven Spielberg has begun talks with Neeson to play Lincoln in a film based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “The Uniter: The Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” which will be published next fall. The plan is for the biopic to start production in January ’06.

It would be highly unlikely, not to mention beside the point, if Kearns or Spielberg were to touch upon the recently-raised issue of the younger Abe Lincoln’s alleged bisexuality, as explored by C. A. Tripp’s controversial book, “The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln.” The focus of the Spielberg film, after all, will be the middle-aged Lincoln’s grappling with the Civil War. In any event, Lincoln biographer and respected historian Gore Vidal discusses Tripp’s work and the evidence about Lincoln’s friendships with Joshua Speed, A.Y. Ellis and fellow lawyer Henry Whitney in a current posting on Vanity Fair‘s website.

And speaking of Neeson, it seems slightly odd to see him happily grinning alongside his Phantom Menace costars on the cover of the current Vanity Fair, considering the stories that went around in ’99 that the one-two punch of acting in front of green-screen digital backgrounds in that George Lucas film plus the same experience on Jan de Bont’s The Haunting led Neeson to briefly consider quitting acting…or so it was reported at the time.

With the Golden Globes happening this Sunday (1.16), an oddsmaker for Tom O’Neill’s GoldDerby.com named David Scott is asserting that Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator is a 6-to-5 favorite to win the Best Drama trophy. This implies, of course, that the Howard Hughes biopic is also slightly more favored to take the Best Picture Oscar than other contenders. I have two words for the east-coast contingent that seriously believes in the Marty/Aviator mythology — Miramax kool-aid. (Is that three words?) Truly, the delusion behind this prediction reminds me of Jonestown. Now, it may be that Scorsese will take the Best Director prize this Sunday (maybe)…but that’s because this once-towering filmmaker has been denied Oscar recognition for so many years and should have won the Best Director Oscar for Raging Bull 23 years ago, not because The Aviator is a shatteringly good film or anything along those lines…. please! It should be noted that O’Neill’s prognosticators haven’t totally gone over the waterfall. O’Neill, David Germain of the Associated Press, Scott Bowles of USA Today and Hollywood Reporter columnist Anne Thompson are predicting a Scorsese win for Best Director (4 to 5 odds) while Us Weekly‘s Thelma Adams, film writer and L.A. gadfly Pete Hammond, Entertainment Weekly‘s Dave Karger and Newsday‘s Gene Seymour are forecasting a win for Million Dollar Baby‘s Clint Eastwood (whose chances are said to be even).

Got another gig for a clever trust-fund journalist looking to build a rep. I need a 20-something man/woman to author a Hollywood Elsewhere column that almost totally rips off Defamer…same attitude, style, tone, brevity…only a bit different. And I need someone to run it — write it, grab and crop photos, do headlines, publish it from their home/office, etc. I have no shame about ripping off other sites and columns, as long as you don’t totally copy them. Get in touch and we’ll talk.

As expected, it’s happened — Michael Moore’s Fahrenhit 9/11 has won the ’05 People’s Choice Award for favorite movie of the year. “We live in a great country and we all love our country very much and I am so amazed that you did this…the people of America…that you voted for this film,” Moore said at the podium, not letting on that he’d been tipped a couple of days ago, probably because it’s a fairly common practice. Moore dedicated the award to the U.S troops fighting in Iraq, and said, “I’m honored and gratified.” Will this up the odds of F 9/11 getting a Best Picture nom from the Academy? Probably.

A flattering quote from Slate critic David Edelstein on behalf of Universal’s more-or-less dreadful White Noise ran in a full-page ad in last Friday’s Los Angeles Times. It says, “I screamed louder than I’ve ever screamed before”…which seems odd. Knowing the film’s “scary” moments to be on the cheap and hackneyed side, and knowing Edelstein to be fairly sharp and all, it seemed bizarre that he would have said this…unless, of course, he was being insincere. Then I found the original quote and discovered Edelstein more or less meant it. He called White Noise “an otherwise lousy horror movie,” and besides the screaming louder than he’s ever screamed, etc., he said, “[I] buried myself in Stephanie [Zacharek’s]’s lap, and literally wet my pants — by which I mean I spilled my Diet Coke all over them.”

Much of Southern California has been taking a shower for the last several days, and it won’t be toweling off until at least Tuesday or thereabouts. What this is is a kind of metaphorical cleansing, or perhaps even a metaphysical comment of some kind. It is, to me, almost the same thing as the raining frogs in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. L.A. will be, for a few days at least, a slightly less soiled and shallow place because of the rain. Tens of thousands are experiencing similar epiphanies and reviewing their lives as they stare out the window and lie in their beds at 1:30 ayem and listen to the downpour, and I’ll bet everyone will be sleeping better also. The day-to-day sounds of distant sirens and car alarms and overhead choppers are gone.

The story wasn’t about Paul Newman’s being unhurt after the engine of his race car caught fire during a test run at Daytona on Saturday,1.8 — the story is that a 79 year-old guy is driving race cars. I know people who are 39 or 29, even, who would choke at the thought of testing or pushing themselves, and will never know what it is to step outside their comfort zone and put it on the line. Winston Churchill once said of his experience in the Boer War that “there is nothing so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” I’ll bet Newman was feeling a little bit of that after Saturday’s incident.

I’m shocked, shocked to read that Michael Moore has allegedly been tipped off in advance that Fahrenheit 9/11 has been named the People’s Choice Favorite Film of 2004, according to Gold Derby.com’s Tom O’Neill. Big deal — it’s not like it’s the Oscars or anything. O’Neill admitted in an e-mail announcing his exclusive about Moore’s early information that “even though People’s Choice Award winners usually pretend to be surprised when their names are announced as champs, the fact that CBS really tips them off early has always been a poorly kept secret in the media world and, strangely, has never become controversial.” So…?

For what it’s worth, this column humbly salutes War of the Worlds director Steven Spielberg for donating $1.5 million to the post-tsunami humanitarian effort, and Sandra Bullock for putting $1 million into the same bucket. Spielberg announced it because he’d like other moneybags to follow suit.

Has everyone heard? After two and a half decades of being a Grand Technological Poobah whose interest in ars gratia artis was totally nil, George Lucas now wants to be Gregg Araki. In the new Hollywood-Oscar issue of Vanity Fair, next to a big photo of the Star Wars cast members, Lucas is quoted as saying that the finishing of Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith marks the end of an era in his career, and that he now plans to stop making overtly commercial films, which has been his basic program since the mid ’70s. Lucas tells the magazine, “I’m going to make movies nobody wants to see. I’ve earned the right to fail.” It’s encouraging to hear Darth Vader say he wants to be Annakin Skywalker again, but it sure took him a while. Lucas had earned the “right to fail” 22 years ago after the completion of the first trilogy.