wired

How can one not be moved by the intimations of loyalty and compassion being shown on behalf of Martin Scorsese and his latest film, The Aviator, by admiring smart- guy critics like Emanuel Levy and Variety‘s Todd McCarthy, among others? But even in the expressions of respect and enthusiasm for a great director, limits should be observed. Levy cannot proclaim on the front page of Movie City News that this biopic about the young to middle-aged Howard Hughes is “extremely entertaining” and not expect others (me, for instance) to slap their heads in disbelief. Offer, if you must, the flimsy argument that The Aviator is some kind of Oscar-worthy Scorsese package (it isn’t, trust me, unless people get it in their heads to nominate it as an acknowledgement of Scorsese’s career, and the fact that the Academy has never given him the prize), but Levy declaring it’s a sure thing that Scorsese will be handed his fifth Best Director nomination for The Aviator seems delusional to me. Likewise, his asking “how high will The Aviator fly with the Academy voters” is nutso. Trust me — this very long-running film is, quite often, a form of psychological torture.

Newsweek critic David Ansen says there’s “fun to be had” in Ocean’s Twelve (Warner Bros., 12.10), but otherwise….aah, why paraphrase? “There’s so much going on in Steven Soderbergh’s sequel — George Nolfi’s screenplay seems like three slightly different movies competing for dominance — that everyone gets short shrift,” Ansen writes. “Ocean’s Twelve is busier, messier and thinner than its predecessor, and while it looks like the cast is having a blast and a half, the studied hipness can get so pleased with itself it borders on the smug.” Borders?

I said two or three weeks ago that The Phantom of the Opera is not hateful and is sufficiently emotionally grandiose that it may well end up with a Best Picture nomination….who knows? Not my cup of tea but it meets a certain middle-class criteria, etc. Well, since then the Phantom haters have been gaining ground and now I’m hearing all around that it’s not good enough, it’s not Chicago, Joel Schmuacher is not Baz Luhrman, and so on. All right, maybe so. On the other side of the ledger are all those Average Joe types who’ve been delighted and turned on by it…so what do I know? All I know is that I can’t seem to put my finger on this one. It seems to be toast, but…

Brad Pitt talking about Ocean’s 12 costar Catherine Zeta Jones: “I think the biggest joke was on Catherine because she actually thought we were making a movie. Being the new kid, nobody told her because she was up running lines and breaking down her character.” As always, it’s the the words in passing — the Latin term is obiter dicta — that give the game away. Pitt’s remark seems to confirm what I’ve been hearing, which is that Ocean’s 12 is a jokey romp piece and will probably prove to be something of a fast burn, playdate-wise.

The limited opening of Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby will happen two days earlier — on Wednesday, 12.15. That means Warner Bros. feels very confident about the response. They should be.

“Fascinating, full-throttle DiCaprio performance, although he really isn’t right for the role…not really. Otherwise, it’s an OCD fest that drags in the middle, is way too long, feels curiously over-cut and over-accelerated in the beginning, and, some brilliant sequences aside (like the plane crash in Beverly Hills), is, for me, a major wipe-out. A good half of it is schizy wackjob OCD stuff…OCD, OCD, itching, twitching…twelve peas on the plate, bloodshot eyes, compulsive hand-washing, the horrors of dirt and lint, urine-filled milk bottles. Howard Hughes had to be a more intriguing guy than this. Cate Blanchett is a lot of fun as Kate Hepburn, but Gwen Stefani’s hard Italian features are totally wrong for a cameo walk-on as Jean Harlow, a milk-fed Missouri girl. I saw it with a middle-aged Academy crowd, and when it was over it was like walking out of a funeral home… nobody saying anything or making eye contact, shuffling off to the garage.”

Since the Aviator cat’s out of the bag with last Wednesday’s rave review by Variety‘s Todd McCarthy, it’s okay to respond to his praising of the film’s CG-bolstered aerial photography sequences. They’re not “eminently satisfying,” as he described them, because over and over they reach out from the screen, grab you by both lapels and shout, “Hard drive!” McCarthy says “it’s not that you can’t tell when a flight is being digitally rendered, but it’s all done amazingly well — the degree of artifice surrounding the entire picture allows the computer work to fit in gracefully rather than to stick out.” This is emphatically not so. The aerial shots of Hughes flying those World War I biplanes, the H-1 Racer, the XF-11 and the Spruce Goose constantly demand that the viewer foresake any semblance of belief in what is supposed to be organic reality. More than once these planes fly right into the lens…nothing but flagrant CG show-off crap. The rule is the rule: CG must be invisible or it’s nothing. That shot of Lenin’s statue being helicoptered across the Berlin skies in Goodbye Lenin, for example…totally believable.

Thanks to L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein for the front-page plug in today’s (Tuesday. 11.30) “Big Picture” column, in which he quotes my Million Dollar Baby blurb from last week (“Trust me, it’s a multi-Oscar nominee — Best Picture, Best Director,” etc.). It would’ve been a mite cooler if he’d mentioned Hollywood Elsewhere as my residence and not just referred to me as being linked on Oscarrace.com. After all, he spells out Movie City News in his discussion of David Poland’s Oscar predictions. I’ll have some reactions to Patrick’s Oscar contender assessments in Wednesday’s (12.1) main column.

The mystery of James L. Brooks’ Spanglish (Columbia, 12.17) will begin to unravel early next week. Is it Oscar material or just a (presumably) good relationship comedy? Will Tea Leoni’s performance hit the right notes or…? I keep thinking back to a report I heard several weeks ago, which is that Cloris Leachman, playing Leoni’s wine-drinking, acid-tongued mom, has all the zingers…

Alexander star Colin Farrell has been reading the reviews of Oliver Stone’s historical epic since its Wednesday debut and admits, “It’s been f***ing hammered!” He’s told Toronto journalist Bruce Kirkland that “I don’t usually read [reviews], but I read them this time because I love the film so much and I have so much invested in it emotionally — and I’m worried more for Oliver than for me because he’s highly sensitive, as tough as he is.” Alexander, he emphasized, “is an important thing in my life…a lot of my life has gone into it. My son was born during it, and a lot of my son is there in my performance, whatever my performance is. So it certainly affects me. I can’t abstract myself from it at all. I can’t be subjective. Having said that, I do think a lot of [the negativity toward the film] is personal, with respect to Oliver.”

I am sooo outta here, sooo not working over the next four days. Happy Thanksgiving to anyone paying a visit. I don’t see myself doing any more than six, seven work sessions (adding items, editing stories) between now and Sunday. Chill-out time, man.

Uhmmm…I got it wrong about Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake in a WIRED item I wrote two or three days ago. It played at last September’s Venice Film Festival and not, apparently, at the Toronto Film Festival.