wired

There are two words that describe the reported thinking among certain undecided voters out there, as relayed in a New York Times story out today (10.25), and those words are “staggeringly ignorant.” Perhaps the better adjective for ignorant is “willfully,” since the only way to support Bush in the face of all the damning indicators is to invest in massive levels of denial. The bad guys seem to be inching up, up, up…polls say Kerry is slightly behind in Hawaii, Florida, et. al. The New York Times says support for Bush among black voters is higher than it was in ’00….what?? Even the www.electoral-vote.com guy is sounding dispirited. The last hope is in the preferences of the newly registered and the under-30s, whom pollsters supposedly aren’t talking to.

“Closer is, I suppose, a Carnal Knowledge for 2004,” cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt has told San Francisco Chronicle columnist Hugh Hart. “It’s obsessed with sexual politics. It’s a quite upsetting, very adult drama, and [director] Mike Nichols is a fanatic about reality.” Glamour was not a concern. “When it worked dramatically, I wanted Julia Roberts not to look good,” he informs. “She was game. For one scene with Clive Owen that was very emotionally raw, she didn’t wash her hair, she wore no makeup at all. It was very much about the drama involved, so everything worked from the rehearsals and from the play.”

The unfolding Paramount Classics situation boils down to this: (a) as run by co-presidents Ruth Vitale and David Dinerstein over the last six years, the division has been steadily profitable but not overwelmingly so, mainly due to financial-strategy restrictions placed upon Vitale-Dinerstein by former Paramount COO Jonathan Dolgen; (b) with Dolgen out as of last June, Viacom co-prexy Tom Freston has said he wants Par Classics to become a more dynamic, Fox Searchlight-resembling operation, and (c) in line with this, Paramount vice-chairman Rob Friedman is thinking about hiring John Sloss (the New York-based indie sales vet and producerís rep), former UA topper Bingham Ray or maybe distrib-marketing vet Danny Rossett to run a new, re-jiggered Paramount Classics, the basic idea being to focus more on production and building relationships with filmmakers. Great, but I donít get why Vitale-Dinerstein are being painted with the Dolgen brush. Hitting only bunts and singles wasnít their idea, and they know the ins and outs of the acquisitions game as well as Sloss, Ray or Rossett.

It was clear from an early John Logan draft of The Aviator, subsequently shot by director Martin Scorsese and the film now awaiting a Warner Bros. release on 12.17, that the resounding love affair in the piece isn’t between Howard Hughes and a woman (Cate Blanchett’s Katharine Hepburn, Kate Beckinsdale’s Ava Gardner, et. al.) but between Hughes and his flying machines. The longish film (a recent cut ran around 165 minutes) is also, apparently, buoyantly free of glumness or heavy-osity. “I know enough about it to say it is escapism, certainly for Scorsese,” says industry tipster Pete Hammond. “That doesn’t mean it’s comedy, but it doesn’t have the heavier feel of some of his other stuff. It’s all about Hollywood, aviation and the larger-than-life persona of the young Howard Hughes.” A publicist who’s seen the film told Hammond late last week this was a good way to describe the film, agreeing it’s “just good entertainment.” Blanchett is said to be quite robust as Hepburn, but wouldn’t that be a hard one to miss?

“The challenge of taking on esteemed material has evidently inspired Alfie director [Charles] Shyer to shake off the bland and bloodless polish of his ultra-mainstream Hollywood pictures to inject this remake with welcome vitality,” writes Variety critic Todd McCarthy. “Shyer employs a jumpy, quick-cutting style he’s never used before. He also gets the dynamics among the characters right, is generous to his actors (all the actresses come off very nicely indeed) and guides Jude Law to an entirely engaging performance that does not so much compete with Caine’s as comfortably co-exist alongside it at a nearly four-decade remove. Many men meeting an Alfie in real life would no doubt be put off by his impossibly good looks and luck with women, but Law makes him entirely palatable company.”

Roman Polanski, your legend is about to be challenged. Before shooting Washington, the third and final installment of his Amerika trilogy, Lars von Trier is going to make some kind of classy horror film about the Devil. To be called Antikrist, it will √ɬ¨put an end to the big lie that God created the world, according to von Trier’s producer, Peter Aalbek Jensen, and will explore von Trier’s contrarian view that ¨it was Satan who created the human race and the world. There’s no script yet apparently, but according to a story in the Danish daily Berlingske Tidende , the plan is for the amply-budgeted, digitally-shot, English-language film to be completed in time for showing at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. The plot will be about an American biologist (probably to be played by a big-name American actor) who develops a fear of nature, finding it to be a place of evil, and resultantly seeks out therapeutic help. As Antikrist develops, von Trier’s theory of Satan being the true father and creator will be explored. (There’s a more detailed piece about this in the Swedish newspaper daily Dagens Nyheter .)

From Bill Maher’s “New Rules” routine on last Friday’s (19.15) “Real Time with Bill Maher” HBO show, to wit: “New Rule: No puppet fucking. The South Park guys have a new movie called Team America, which features graphic sex scenes between marionettes. Hey, you know what? If I had any interest in wooden sex with strings attached, I’d get married.”

Natalie Portman’s striptease-club scene in Closer will, I’m told, be cause for hormonal excitation among younger males, particularly those who haven’t seen her in Garden State (in which she gives a wonderfully ripe and robust performance)and who know her primarily as Princess Amidala. I don’t know what I can add to this, except to say that strip clubs are very exciting places to be for about five minutes…until that rancid predatory vibe starts to seep into your pores and you can’t wait to leave. But those first five minutes are great.

Another totally detestable movie idea being developed by Joe Roth’s Revolution Studios: a Beatles film musical called “All You Need Is Love,” currently being written by Brit screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. Pic would use well over a dozen cover versions of Beatle songs to “drive the narative” of a love story between an English lad and an American lassie, set against the backdrop of the social upheaval of the 1960s.
If this thing ever gets made, it could one day share the marquee of West Hollywood’s New Beverly cinema with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band.

If you buy what some Democratic pulse-takers are saying, the election is closer than it seems because the historical record is that the vast majority of undecided voters have always gone for the challenger at the last minute. I’d like to believe this, but with an apparent majority of red-staters still preferring Bush in every poll except the most recent New York Times and Zogby surveys, my gut is giving me that old sinking feeling again. I also suspect that TV news media types believe it’s in their interest to push the scenario that it’s still a neck-and-neck race…even if the bottom-line indications suggest otherwise. Very dispiriting.

There was an early-bird press screening of Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Touchstone, 12.25) last Monday evening (10.18), and one reasonably discerning guy who attended says he “loved it….I was laughing hysterically…it was a real rush…my heart and mind were completely in synch over it.” This from a guy, F.Y.I., who liked Anderson’s first three films — Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums — but didn’t quite love them.

In her role as Tea Leoni’s mother in James L. Brooks’ Spanglish (Columbia, 12.17), Cloris Leachman has all the great hilarious-obnoxious lines, I’m hearing, and generally knocks it out of the park. “She has all the classic Brooks lines…lines that turn in on themselves,” this guy is saying. “You know, like ‘sometimes having low self-esteem just shows good sense’?” I guess this means Leachman could be one of the five Best Supporting Actress contenders, as mothers with sharp tongues always seem to strike a special chord with people. And to think…Jane Fonda wanted this role for her big comeback vehicle, and she auditioned for it, but Brooks felt she wasn’t right for it. And now Leachman has nailed her best role since The Last Picture Show.