Early this morning I finally saw Roar Uthaug‘s The Wave (Magnolia, 3.4), a $6.5 million Norweigan disaster film that’s easily as good as any similar-type American pic. Set in the real-life village of Geiranger, it’s about a married geologist dad named Kristian (Kristoffer Joner), trying to warn authorities about a possible tsunami (caused by a landslide into an adjacent fjord) that will drown the town. Every man, woman, dog and cat who hasn’t gotten the hell out will meet their maker.

Nobody listens, of course. In fact Kristian’s soon-to-be-former geological colleagues (he’s taken a better-paying job with an oil company) roll their eyes and give each other sullen looks. You know those looks, right? And the penalty for them? Any character in a disaster film who ignores scientific warnings and in fact embraces a blase attitude must suffer a horrible death when the bad thing finally happens. He/she must pay through the nose and whine like a dog and die badly.

When the landslide alarm sounds at the 45-minute mark, the locals and tourists have ten minutes (i.e, 600 seconds) to make it to high ground. Several drownings are assured. Kristian gets his young daughter (Edith Haagenrud-Sande) to safety but his wife (Ane Dahl Torp) and teenaged son (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) are stuck inside a four-story hotel when the wave hits, and urgently need rescuing.

The story is somewhat reminiscent of Irwin Allen‘s The Towering Inferno. Kristian is a bit like Paul Newman‘s architect, a smart guy trying to warn everyone, and then nobly struggling to save lives after disaster strikes.

I had three problems with Uthaug’s film, and I’m afraid they’re quite severe.

Problem #1 is that Kristian is too raggedy looking (he’s one of those guys who can’t pull off the two-week beardo look — he needs a shave). He’s not cool and focused like Newman, but acts like someone who needs to take Klonopin. When he’s ranting about the coming tsunami he’s like a character out of Nurse Ratched’s psycho ward. And he’s always got this stupid look on his face that says “oh my dear God, I’m so scared and upset but at the same time I have to do something to save my children and my fellow villagers!!” Wells to Joner: Will you go fuck yourself, please? Just grim up, be a man and do the brave, studly stuff. Spare us your tearful looks and your damn drippy emotions.

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After catching an 8:30 am screening of Roar Uthaug‘s The Wave inside Santa Barbara’s Metroplex I ran into Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg and producer Marcia Nasatir, whom I’ve spoken to at parties over the last decade. Feinberg suggested I might want to attend a discussion he was soon to moderate about A Classy Broad, a documentary about Nasatir from director/editor Anne Goursaud. That sounded interesting so I ran into a nearby theatre and caught the last 15 minutes of it.

During this mornings’ q & a following screening of Anne Goursaud’s A Classy Broad: (l. to r.) Marcia Nasatir, Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg, director Anne Goursaud.

Goursaud’s doc is obviously an admiring, up-close portrait of a brilliant and tenacious producer who had a tougher row to hoe than today’s female producers, coming up as she did in an era that was even more of a patriarchial system. By the mid ’70s Nasatir had worked her way up to a United Artists exec vp position under Mike Medavoy. She did some heavy lifting on such ’70s classics as Three Days of the Condor, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Carrie, Rocky, Coming Home, Apocalypse Now. As an independent producer Nasatir got The Big Chill made; ditto Ironweed, Hamburger Hill, Mrs. Cage and Death-Defying Acts.

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Last night the Santa Barbara Film Festival threw a live Johnny Depp show at the Arlington. As dismissive and snarly as I felt at the very beginning over his tardiness (Depp’s limo pulled up at 8:20 pm — a good 50 minutes later than usual), I felt more and more charmed by the 53 year-old superstar during his interview with Leonard Maltin. He’s not a big star for nothing — he knows how to “get” people, and Hollywood Elsewhere, sitting front-row right and tweeting like a motherfucker, was no exception.

Depp spoke in front of the huge Arlington crowd like he was sitting at a kitchen table at 2:30 am, maybe a little hung-over and too tired to put on airs. He was Mr. Be-Bop-A-Luah all the way through, shaking his head and going “whoa, heh-heh…I’m not too good at this,” channelling the ghosts of Hunter S. Thompson and Marlon Brando, a gently playful prankster, more into toying with Maltin than submitting to his questions and sometimes even putting a slice or two of his actual self on the plate, mate.

Depp was there to accept the festival’s Modern Master Award — the first of a cavalcade of Oscar worthies who will make gala appearances and submit to interviews in this seaside town over the next nine days.

Clearly not at ease with the format and yet thoroughly confessional at every turn, Depp rambled and muttered and smirked his way through most of the 110-minute interview. Depp is a subversive. He cannot and will not play the humble-brag game. You can sense that he regards himself as some kind of King Shit cultural figure, but he’s too Deppian, too committed to (or consumed by) his rich-as-fuck attitude-rebel personality to swagger around with any kind of “ladies and gentleman, here I am!” conviction. He can’t help but smirk, shrug his shoulders, mumble, chuckle and riff like a jazzman in the back room.

You could argue that Depp was a good sport for showing up at all, as the initial expectation was that he’d land a Best Actor nomination for his husky-eyed performance as Boston gangster Whitey Bulger in Scott Cooper‘s Black Mass. The Academy didn’t oblige (if you ask me Depp should have been nominated instead of The Danish Girl‘s Eddie Redmayne) but he came anyway, late as fuck and therefore obliged to blow off the usual red-carpet interviews and autograph-signings with the fans, who had begun to gather in force around 6:30 pm or so.

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Two or three hours ago Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil and I chewed the Oscar fat, munched a little Oscar grass, howled like coyotes at the Oscar moon, poked at the Oscar campfire, shuffled the Oscar deck, etc.

What mattered to everyone who helped make this moderately appealing Bud Light ad is that they got well paid. Amy Schumer and Seth Rogen were most certainly paid a shitload; ditto Paul Rudd for sitting around for a day and saying one line. But I’m genuinely impressed with the production values — the carefully measured lighting, the convincing CG work, the elegant cutting. Who directed this thing? The articles I’ve read so far don’t say.

Due respect to Jean Marc Vallee‘s Demolition (Fox Searchlight, 4.8.16), which I saw at last September’s Toronto Film Festival, but I think it’s arrived just a little too late in the cycle of grief-recovery dramas. By the same token Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester-By-The Sea, which won’t open commercially for several months, is ahead of the curve in terms of dealing with grief-coping tropes. Also: The first time a major movie walloped audiences with a sudden CU car crash out of nowhere was Adaptation (’02), which was 14 years ago. I respectfully believe that this dramatic shock tactic no longer works — it’s been done too many times.

If Adam McKay wins the DGA Award on Saturday night, it’s over — The Big Short will definitely win Best Picture. But McKay won’t win the DGA award, you see. Mad Max: Fury Road‘s George Miller (a favorite of the “steak-eaters”) might win; ditto The Revenant‘s Alejandro G. Inarritu. Right at the top of this Tom O’Neil-hosted discussion Deadline‘s Pete Hammond suggests that Lenny Abrahamson‘s Room has a “conceivable” chance of winning the Best Picture Oscar. (Ya think so, Pete?) He also says that Saturday’s DGA ceremony “could be a Tom McCarthy win.” (As big a fan of Spotlight as I’ve been for the last five months, I’d be hugely surprised if this happens.) O’Neil doesn’t tip his hand, but Hammond seems to be personally pulling for McKay.

A party for Luis Bunuel, thrown at George Cukor’s home in November ’72: (back row from left) Robert Mulligan, William Wyler, George Cukor, Robert Wise, Jean-Claude Carriere, Serge Silverman: (front row from left) Billy Wilder, George Stevens, Luis Bunuel, Alfred Hitchcock, Rouben Mamoulian.

Pinko commie, anti-labor commie hater.

Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini during filming of Accatone.

Josef von Sternberg, Marlene Dietrich.

Akira Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune at 1960 Venice Film Festival.

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It was a bit chilly in Santa Barbara last night. Just a bit. State Street was all but pedestrian-free. I didn’t arrive early enough to pick up my press pass so I decided against attending the SBIFF opening-night party. (I knew I’d be challenged and most likely shut down by the door goons.) Here are two dropbox videos from the opening-night screening of The Little Prince — one containing opening remarks of festival director Roger Durling and another of Prince voice-actor Jeff Bridges, looking like King Neptune with a huge, white beard, entering the Arlington theatre.

Santa Barbara Film Festival honcho Roger Durling delivering remarks before last night’s screening of The Little Prince.

Last weekend The Daily Beast‘s Jen Yamato actually tried to hold Joel and Ethan Coen‘s feet to the fire over the lack of diversity in the casting of Hail, Caesar! Apparently Yamato was not doing a put-on interview; she apparently meant every word. Kudos to the Coens for shutting her down and calling her question “idiotic.” The exchange was posted in a 2.3 Daily Beast piece:

The “overwhelming whiteness” of the casting in Hail, Casear! “could conceivably be explained away by pointing to the milieu of Tinseltown circa the 1950s, when the industry’s racial demographic was far less diverse than it is today,” Yamato writes. [Wells interjection: Hollywood was “less diverse” in the early 1950s than it is today? In the waning days of the Truman administration there were no minorities cast in mainstream films except in a spotty, token, peripheral fashion — cooks, maids, butlers, field hands, coat-check girls.]

Back to Yamato: “I asked the Coens to respond to criticisms that there aren’t more minority characters in the film. In other words, why is #HailCaesarSoWhite?”

“’Why would there be [more minority characters]?’ countered Joel Coen. ‘I don’t understand the question. No…I understand that you’re asking the question, [but] I don’t understand where the question comes from. Not why people want more diversity, [but] why they would single out a particular movie and say, ‘Why aren’t there black or Chinese or Martians in this movie? What’s going on?’ That’s the question I don’t understand. The person who asks that question has to come in the room and explain it to me.”

Yamato asked, “As filmmakers, is it important or not important to consciously factor in concerns like diversity?”

“’Not in the least!’ Ethan answered. ‘It’s important to tell the story you’re telling in the right way, which might involve black people or people of whatever heritage or ethnicity…or it might not.’

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Way back in the mid to late ’50s, the gulf between upstanding, responsible-minded, martini-drinking World War II generation types and your basic big-city bebop/beatnik subterranean jazz musician types was all but insurmountable. This is a partly amusing summary of this disparity. I’d listened to this Shorty Petterstein interview before, but I hadn’t seen the animated version until last night.

Brian Oakes‘ Jim: The James Foley Story, which I felt conflicted about after catching it last week in Park City, will air on HBO on Saturday, 2.6.

My main complaint was that the doc felt “too worshipful.” Oakes presents Foley as “a great fellow, a ballsy adventurer, clever, resourceful, generous of heart,” I noted. “I’m sorry to say this but two hours of adoration can wear you down a bit. Was there anything about Foley that was lacking or imperfect? Most likely but the doc won’t go there.” Jim is not my idea of a wildly dishonest film, but Oakes clearly wanted to pay tribute to his childhood friend first and get to the bottom of things second.

But even with this understandable motive there’s a definite feeling of denial when you listen to Oakes speak with with The Frame‘s John Horn during a 2.2 broadcast.

Foley “loved people, telling their stories, the underdogs, the victims of war,” Oakes tells Horn. “[He] had the recipe of a war correspondent…a rare breed [requiring] physical courage, moral courage….you need to be calm under very stressful situations.”

Horn asks why Foley was a conflict journalist in Libya and Syria. Why in particular did he decide to cover Syria after being seized in Libya and held for over 40 days, knowing full well that Syria was, if anything, a scarier place than Libya?

Obviously Foley, like many journalists who’ve covered war zones, was a kind of war junkie — risk, danger, adrenaline. That famous Chris Hedges quote that was used at the beginning of The Hurt Locker surely applies: “The rush of battle is a potent and almost lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” Hedges, a seasoned conflict journalist himself, added that “war gives us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.”

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