A couple of friends were kicking around the Best Actor field yesterday, and they came up with 17 feasible Best Actor contenders. My revised list goes to 19. But after you boil it down, there are closer to eight or nine performances that will probably make the grade in most people’s minds and therefore go … Read more
I had a few responses after seeing Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood at last January’s Sundance Film Festival — “historic,” “unique,” “really quite special,” “mild mannered,” “fascinating” and “a human-scale, life-passage stunt film.” But for whatever reason the word “masterpiece” never quite came to me. I’m not disputing this judgment. It just never tapped me on the … Read more
“It’s no surprise that watching actors naturally age on camera without latex and digital effects makes for mesmerizing viewing. And at first it may be hard to notice much more than the creases etching Ethan Hawke’s face, the sexy swells of Patricia Arquette’s belly and Ellar Coltrane’s growth spurts. You may see your own face … Read more
Condolences to the family and friends of the late Louis Zamperini, the former Olympic athlete and World War II survivor of a Pacific Ocean plane crash and Japanese prisoner-of-war camp who went to become an inspirational speaker and lived to the ripe old age of 97. Ditto his legions of admirers. Zamperini passed yesterday in … Read more
Earlier this afternoon I recorded a 39-minute chat with Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet about the likeliest-seeming Best Picture contenders as of now. Early summer Best Picture projections are purely about spitballing, of course, but after that they’re about (a) recognizing possibly profound thematic elements that certain films appear to contain (or at least might … Read more
In the following order, the Best 2014 Films That I’ve Seen Thus Far (regardless of forthcoming or undetermined release dates for those seen at Sundance, Berlin and Cannes) are as follows: 1. Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan (hands down the best film I saw in Cannes and an almost certain contender for the 2014 Best Foreign Language … Read more
2014 is all but one-third over, and by my yardstick there have been ten commercially-released films thus far that have definitely cut the mustard (Locke, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Ida, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Noah, Omar, Only Lovers Left Alive, Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, Tim’s Vermeer, Fading Gigolo). To these you need to add … Read more
In my 4.23 story about the forthcoming Paramount-MGM remake of Ben-Hur (“William Wyler Turns In His Grave“), I used all my gunpowder trashing the hiring of the vulgar, sloth-like Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Abraham Lincoln – Vampire Hunter) to direct. In so doing I overlooked Paramount’s signing of rightwing Christian producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey … Read more
“This sounds like a weird thing to say, but I remember thinking Robert Redford wasn’t that great an actor, but that he’d had an unbelievable career because he knew how to use himself well. He has incredible taste, a literary development. Is he one of the greatest actors of his generation? No. But he’s certainly … Read more
I’m so sick of the Oscar race (and particularly of reading Oscar nominee suck-up pieces on Hitfix.com) that I’m not even going to post the winners in the Oscar Balloon, as I’ve done in the past. I’ll just post them as a story and that’ll be that. Instead I’ll be re-posting HE’s Projected/Likely 2014 Highlights … Read more
The 2014 Sundance Film Festival award ceremony begins about three hours hence (6 pm Pacific), and will be viewable on the Sundance website. A friend told me this morning that she sensed an undercurrent of disappointment from my Park City filings. I don’t how where that came from. I saw eight exceptional films (exciting, well … Read more
A 10.22 piece by The Wrap‘s Sharon Waxman declares that Sundance ’14 hasn’t delivered any “breakout buzzy” films. Not by my yardstick. I’ve seen five that easily qualify — Whiplash, The Skeleton Twins, Laggies, Boyhood and Life Itself. Plus I found The Battered Bastards of Baseball delightful (as well as obvious material for a feature … Read more