wired

This hasn’t gotten around all that much, but a well-placed source confides there was very little love earlier this year between Clint Eastwood and certain Warner Bros. production execs who had voiced almost no enthusiasm about making Million Dollar Baby, on top of having pulled roughly the same crap when he tried to get them to support the making of Mystic River two years ago. In both cases the WB production execs — relative whippersnappers who don’t get Eastwood because he’s not much of a youth-market magnet — “begrudgingly” okayed both films. The source says Eastwood “was so stung by the lack of faith evidenced by the suits, and felt so pissed that he went ahead and shot Million Dollar Baby without a unit publicist — which is why we never read any on-set location pieces — and vowed he would do only minimal publicity to promote the flick.” Of course, this posture makes little sense now in view of the acclaim Baby is receiving, and Clint may well be shfting gears as the Oscar nominations approach. The source contends, however, that “before anyone at the studio had a chance to see Baby, WB reportedly sold off all foreign rights for under $20 million. This decision may come back to haunt certain people.” Like all stories told late in the night over a campfire, this one probably has holes in it. But it comes from a person who ought to know, and is obviously worth looking into.

Nothing substantive can be gathered from a skillfully-cut teaser assembled from what will obviously be a sumptuous visual experience, but go to the site for Terrence Malick’s The New World (New Line, late ’05) and tell me it doesn√ɬ≠t get your blood going. The dp is Emmanuel Lubezki (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Sleepy Hollow) and man oh man…awesome. Malick√ɬ≠s historical drama is another go at the age-old saga of Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) and Pocahantas (Q’orianka Kilcher), set in olde Virginia. I√ɬ≠ll bet Farrell is comforted that the teaser has arrived right on the heels of the Alexander shutdown. There√ɬ≠s also his performance in Robert Towne√ɬ≠s drama Ask the Dust, about L.A. novelist John Fante, to look forward to.

Speaking of Alexander, Oliver Stone will be talking this evening (Thursday, 11.9) with writer-director Rod Lurie on the stage of the Leo S. Bing theatre at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art at 7:30 pm.

Best prediction line so far about Saturday’s L.A. Film Critics voting (which I’ll be re-running in tomorrow’s story about same): “Virginia Madsen would seem a Best Supporting Actress slam-dunk for Sideways, if only because every heterosexual male in the group would like to…well…give her an award.”

I’ve been meaning to tap out something based on my recent Beverly Hills sit-down with Fahrenheit 9/11 director Michael Moore, but I’ll say this for now: In his meetings with local journos over the past couple of weeks, Moore has been making a compelling argument. Fahrenheit is alive and well in the Best Picture competish despite John Kerry’s loss because “it’s the emotion, stupid.” Moore didn’t use these words (he’s graciously soft-peddled and aw-shucksy in private conversation), but he’s right — his film made people a lot of people tear up (it got to me this way when I saw it at Cannes), and this is the key barometer by which most of the Academy members decide on their Best Picture finalists. There’s the other small matter about F9/11 being a stellar piece of agitprop with one of the most masterfully edited and narrated finales of any film this year…but that’s me talking.

Most of you have probably clicked on this by now, but Milk and Cookies has a silent clip of that deleted sex scene from Matt and Trey’s Team America: World Police. You know, the one the MPAA ratings board kept sending back for more cuts. Whatever…

Another words-in-passing quote, this one from Meet the Fockers costar Dustin Hoffman in the current issue of Time: “Meet the Parents was a really good comedy,” he begins. “It had layers, and it hit some interesting notes. But with this thing, I don’t ever recall being in a movie that seemed to get this kind of steam going before it opened. I mean, it’s just a nice movie. Why do people seem so interested?” Choke, cough, uhhh….excuse me, but did Hoffman just call Meet the Fockers a “thing”? Upon hearing this, Hoffman’s costar Robert de Niro gives off, according to Time, a “low primal grumble.” Then costar Ben Stiller says, “Well, Bob just gave his opinion. How would you write that out?” And then Hoffman goes, “What do you think, Bob? Arrwarrrgh!”

Who could have predicted that a respected consummate chronicler of the difficult lives of extremely bright, neurotic-eccentric but always charming and/or impassioned people of a sensitive liberal bent…who would have guessed that a director-writer known for his open-to-delicate-feelings, Blue State, westside-of-Los-Angeles attitudes in his films….who could have foreseen that this famously whiskered director would deliver a comedy-drama that quite clearly frowns upon and in fact, through the eyes of the film’s lead character, strongly condemns the probably-too-affluent, neurotically distracted personalities who comprise a westside family in present-day Los Angeles? For years to come Red-State politicans will point to this movie and say, “This is what’s wrong with citified Blue State values and liberal lifestyles.” And what late-30ish actress needs some serious career-repair work done in order to counteract the impression left by her performance as the most hopelessly diseased, way-too-pampered nightmare woman in the history of motion pictures?

So Jude Law is being sent back to the minors (and parts like that weirdo photographer assassin in Road to Perdition) because he was in six movies this year and none of them stuck to the wall, and his his biggest and broadest movie-star performance (in Alfie) wasn’t a hot-enough ticket? Okay, maybe Law should be a character actor, but no sooner do people find the spotlight, it seems, than the fast-action, short-attention-spanners give them the hook. It’s a cold and randomly cruel world out there. As Newsweek‘s Jeff Giles recently said, we have reached a critical stage in the Us Magazine poisoning of the culture, or words to that effect.

The Phantom of the Opera is bleeding, staggering, crashing into walls….day after day people tell me “no, forget it, not this one.” A death of a thousand cuts.

Here it is, and this is the truth: Sideways is still the best film of the year, but time and again in conversations I’m picking up respect (even grudging respect at times) for Alexander Payne’s masterful, emotionally rounded adult comedy-drama more than whole-hearted affection or awe. The winner in this regard is Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby, which, as far as I can tell, is far and away the leading contender for the Best Picture Oscar. The third extreme likelihood, I keep hearing, is Taylor Hackford’s Ray — a decently-assembled biopic that no one dislikes (or is attacking). But Eastwood’s entry is unquestionably at the head of the pack right now because Baby is an austere and highly disciplined thing that delivers the strongest emotional kapow.

With the at-long-last screenings this week of James L. Brooks’ Spanglish, all the presumed Oscar-level stuff has now been seen and everyone is starting to shift into kick-back mode with the remaining December releases, two of which — Uni’s Meet the Fockers and Fox’s Flight of the Phoenix — don’t seem to be the sort of thing that will weigh heavily upon anyone’s soul. No offense to the intrepid Scott Rudin, but I’d prefer to overlook Par’s Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events for the time being. I have a certain aversion to Jim-Carrey-in-elaborate-makeup films. Actually, I have a slight aversion to Jim Carrey. Whoa…where did that come from?