Dennis Lim‘s Brad Pitt interview in the 1.1.12 edition of the New York Times reads like a slightly sheepish confession of a guy (i.e., Lim) who went out on a blind date and…well, had an okay time but not a great one either. Lim is an intensely scholastic monk-dweeb and Pitt is obviously Pitt, and the twains just didn’t have a chance, man.
Lim sat down with Pitt at the Waldorf Astoria in early December. “Many of his answers had the vague, scripted ring of someone determined not to say more than necessary,” Lim writes. On top of which Pitt was “slightly awkward and distractible when facing questions,” and “seemed self-conscious about his pro forma responses.”
Blunter Lim: “I couldn’t get going with this guy…Jesus! Why couldn’t he relax into the groove of my Manhattan film-dweeb consciousness and just open up and let loose and kick the ball around? Scott Foundas and I can talk for hours about anything. This was a chore!”
Best passage: “Like any seasoned pro on the Oscar circuit, Pitt was careful to sound appreciative without stooping to the vulgarity of campaigning. ‘I’ve been around long enough to know it’s very fickle and it’s a cyclical wheel,’ he said. ‘But I will say this: It is surprisingly fun when your number comes up.'”
Second best passage: “Having just flown in from France for the premiere of Angelina Jolie‘s directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey, dressed down in a long-sleeve V-neck and casual pants, Mr. Pitt was fighting fatigue and jet lag. (He downed two Starbucks cappuccinos, delivered by a Waldorf employee.) He gamely endured a photo shoot and a 90-minute conversation but lost his train of thought several times (‘I’m sorry, man, I am so upside down right now’), and after a mid-interview bathroom break, he made a sheepish confession: ‘I did the whole photo shoot with my fly undone.'”
Now that the Dragon Tattoo and Extremely Loud embargoes have expired and I’ve seen Margaret and Mission: Impossible 4 — Ghost Protocol, here’s my final revised rundown of HE’s bests, favorites, almost favorites, mezzo-mezzos and worsts of 2011. And I’ve found a place for Margin Call, which I omitted in the initial posting.
My top ten met the usual pick-of-the-litter characteristics — quality, audacity, originality, personal satisfaction, stylistic excitement, something strong and central that said felt new or bold or extra-cool. Aesthetic judgment, personal delight, etc.
If you include the “decent, not half bad” category the bottom line is that 2011 delivered around 65 films that ranged from excellent to very good to respectably passable.
HE’s 11 Best of 2011 (in this order): Moneyball, A Separation, The Descendants, Miss Bala, Drive, Contagion, Win Win, The Tree of Life, Margaret, In The Land of Blood and Honey, Tyrannosaur. (11)
Special “I Don’t Know Where They Precisely Belong But I Like ‘Em More Than Some Of The Others” Distinction (i.e., Close With Unlit Cigar): Attack The Block, Beginners, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, X-Men First Class, Captain America, Hugo, 50/50, Young Adult, The Artist, Hanna, The Guard, Bridesmaids, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Buck, Page One: Inside The NY Times, Rampart, Margin Call. (17)
Good & Generally Approved With Issues (in this order): Take Shelter, A Better Life, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Ides of March, Midnight in Paris, A Dangerous Method, Albert Nobbs, J. Edgar, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Applause, Melancholia, Mission: Impossible 4 — Ghost Protocol, The Lincoln Lawyer, Another Happy Day, Source Code, Point Blank, Cedar Rapids, The Iron Lady, Happy Happy, Super, The Housemaid, Carnage, Another Earth, Le Havre. (24)
Decent, Not Half Bad: Coriolanus, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, Insidious, The Last Lions, Myth of the American Sleepover, Tabloid, Super 8, The Trip, Making The Boys (doc about Mart Crowley and The Boys in the Band), Jane Eyre, Paranormal Activity 3, Restless, Submarine, Take This Waltz, Thor, Meet Monica Valour, Rango. (18)
Approved But Lesser Almodovar: The Skin I Live In. (1)
Lesser Dardennes: The Kid With A Bike. (1)
Lesser Kiarostami: Certified Copy (1)
Respectable Intentions, Didn’t Get There: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Meek’s Cutoff, London Boulevard, Texas Killing Fields, Warrior, Straw Dogs, The Way Back, Like Crazy, The Rum Diary, Sleeping Beauty, The Adjustment Bureau, The Company Men, White Irish Drinkers, The Devil’s Double, The Dilemma, Warrior, We Bought A Zoo, Wuthering Heights, Anonymous. (20)
Meh, Underbaked, Less is Less, Insufficient: Rubber, Ceremony, Hall Pass, Bullhead, Fright Night, The Help, Magic Trip, Our Idiot Brother. (8)
Most Dislikable Sundance 2011 Film: Bellflower. (1)
Regretful Shortfallers: 30 Minutes Or Less, The Beaver, Higher Ground, Knuckle, Larry Crowne, Limitless. (6)
Haven’t Seen ‘Em (Guilt Factor): Black Power Mixtape, Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within, Jeff Who Lives At Home, The Last Circus, The Oranges, Paul Williams Still Alive, Project Nim, Red State, Pina, Pariah, The Deep Blue Sea, This Must Be The Place, The Turin Horse. (13)
Haven’t Seen ‘Em & Don’t Care That Much: Apollo 18, The Lady, Arthur Christmas, Soul Surfer, Henry’s Crime, Blank City, Cold Weather, Blackthorn, Bonsai, A Boy And His Samurai, Burke & Hare, Cars 2, The Catechism Cataclysm, Conan The Barbarian, The Double, Gnomeo & Juliet, Happy Feet 2, The Human Centipede II, I Am Number Four, Jack and Jill, Just Go With It, Kung-Fu Panda 2, The Muppets, Mars Needs Moms, My Sucky Teen Romance, No Strings Attached, Paul Williams Still Alive, Phillip The Fossil, Priest, The Sitter, The Smurfs, Snow Flower & The Secret Fan, Sound Of My Voice, The Thing, The Woman, The Three Musketeers, Alvin And The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. (38)
Acute Dislike, Blah, Nothing, Stinko: The Big Year, Arthur, Bad Teacher, Battle: Los Angeles, Butter, The Caller, Cat Run, The Change-Up, Cowboy & Aliens, Colombiana, Crazy, Stupid, Love, Dream House, Fast Five, Final Destination 5, Five Days of War, Footloose, Friends With Benefits, The Green Hornet, Green Lantern, Hall Pass, The Hangover Part II, Hobo With A Shotgun, Horrible Bosses, Kaboom, Machine Gun Preacher, New Year’s Eve, One Day, Paul, Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Red Riding Hood, Sucker Punch, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1, Tower Heist, Twixt, Water For Elephants, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Your Highness, The Zookeeper, Your Highness, Miral. (41)
Here’s last night’s Charlie Rose show featuring three principals behind In The Land of Blood and Honey — director-writer Angelina Jolie, star Zana Marjanovic, costar Rade Serbedzija. Jolie’s film doesn’t wallow in the horrors of the Serb-Bosnian conflict — it portrays them plain and straight, each scene cut to the essence.
I’m too whipped to write my review today of Angelina Jolie‘s In the Land of Blood and Honey, but I can tell already that my generally positive reaction, which I wasn’t expecting to have, is a minority view among critics who’ve posted today. Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy is at least somewhat admiring.
“It’s clear within the first few minutes of In the Land of Blood and Honey, a blunt and brutal look at genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s, that this is a serious piece of work and not simply a vanity project for its debuting writer-director, Angelina Jolie,” he begins.
“But while the personal story at its core carries some nuanced shadings, this impressively mounted production gradually reveals itself first and foremost as a compendium of atrocities, a catalogue of pointless abuse and killings no one did much to stop for three years.
“Fueled by her well-known attachment to humanitarian causes, the director trains an intense light on a situation most outsiders at the time preferred not to deal with and now would rather forget about, which means that Jolie would literally have to lead people by the hand into theaters for this Film District release to do any theatrical business beyond the already committed.”
“The Artist has taken the lead in this year’s Best Picture race, according to the Gurus of Gold and Gold Derby handicappers,” a spiritually resigned Sasha Stonewrote yesterday morning on Awards Daily. “There is always that point in the year when you just know. And there is no stopping this movie. If there were any doubts before, there are no doubts now.”
Like any half-attuned, half-perceptive film lover out there, Stone knows that The Artist isn’t necessarily the best of anything. It’s the leading cave-in consensus choice among the under-inspired and easily led. It’s the easiest film to vote for if you take comfort, as most do, from the warmth of a crowd. And Stone, I believe, knows whereof she speaks. She lives and breathes and calculates the Oscar race like no other (certainly well beyond what I’m capable of) and when she throws in the towel, I listen.
“As an Oscar watcher this year, since my heart was pulled from my chest and stomped all over last year, I have to just shut down this year and play it as it lays,” Stone wrote.
The majority surely senses or suspects that The Artist is all about re-creation, backward visitation and reflective surfaces, but they’re down with that. They love the silvery sheen and the novelty and the showboat charm. The fact that it possesses and radiates nothing that is truly its own doesn’t bother them — it stirs heartfelt applause. A film that provides a nice pleasant time…yes!
I’m reminded of a line from Glengarry Glen Ross in which a real-estate salesman tells a colleague that an older couple “imperceptibly slumped” toward the end of a sales call. That’s what’s happening right now. The slump is in and the argument is over, and for people like me that’s unfortunate.
I don’t live for the Oscars but for the season, and particularly the various skirmishes in this and that category. Debating which film truly deserves to win Best Picture has always been a fun diversion. And now, weeks before the nominations and more than two months before the Oscar telecast, that debate has come to an end. Terrific. Pass the pretzels.
“My basic impression is that The Artist is a very well-done curio — an experiment in reviving a bygone era and mood by way of silent-film expression,” I wrote seven months ago from Cannes. “Is it a full-bodied motion picture with its own voice and voltage — a film that stands on its own? Not quite. But it’s a highly diverting, sometimes stirring thing to sit through, and the overall HE verdict is a thumbs-up.
“The Artist has been very carefully assembled, but chops-wise it’s not strictly a revisiting of silent-film era language. It visually plays like a kind of ersatz silent film — technically correct in some respects but with a 2011 sensibility in other ways. It has a jaunty, sometimes jokey tone in the beginning, and then it gradually shifts into drama and then melodrama. But it tries hard and does enough things right that the overall residue is one of satisfaction and a job well done.”
I wrote this while sitting on a stool inside the Orange press room, an hour or so after the first Artist screening in the Grand Lumiere. It never crossed my mind that I’d just reviewed the Best Picture Oscar winner for 2011. I doubt that it occured to anyone.
Is there any more tiresome expression in the English language than “whatever”? I’m sincerely sorry to be thinking this right now. My imperceptibly slumping congratulations are hereby offered to the Weinstein Co. publicists and particularly to Harvey Weinstein himself. By any sporting standard they played the game well.
Once more with feeling, HE’s 10 Best of 2011 (in this order): Moneyball, A Separation, The Descendants, Miss Bala, Drive, Contagion, Win Win, Tyrannosaur, The Tree of Life and In The Land of Blood and Honey.
TheWrap‘s Steve Pond has suggested that Golden Globes emcee Ricky Gervais could make a joke or two about Angelina Jolie‘s In The Land of Blood and Honey being nominated for a Best Foreign-Language Film GG nominee because the HFPA just wants her to attend, etc. I honestly don’t think there’s a joke there. Jolie’s film is entirely solid and 100% respectable. Jolie could be fat and homely and unmarried and it still could have been nominated.
With no regard whatsover to awards handicapping (and thank God for that), here are my rankings and classifications for over 210 films released in 2011. My top ten met the usual pick-of-the-litter characteristics — quality, audacity, originality, personal satisfaction, stylistic excitement, something strong and central that said “whoa, that’s new or bold or extra-cool.” Aesthetic judgment, personal delight, etc.
If you include the “decent, not half bad” category the bottom line is that 2011 delivered around 65 films that ranged from excellent to very good to respectably passable.
I’m sure I’ve pasted a title or two twice or left deserving titles out of this or that category and forgotten some films altogether. All suggestions and corrections are welcome. And HERE WE GO….
HE’s 10 Best of 2011 (in this order): Moneyball, A Separation, The Descendants, Miss Bala, Drive, Contagion, Win Win, Tyrannosaur, The Tree of Life, In The Land of Blood and Honey. (10)
Still Not Allowed to Say Anything: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2)
Special “I Don’t Know Where They Precisely Belong But I Like ‘Em More Than Some Of The Others” Distinction (i.e., Close With Unlit Cigar): Attack The Block, Beginners, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, X-Men First Class, Captain America, Hugo, 50/50, Young Adult, The Artist, Hanna, The Guard, Bridesmaids, Buck, Page One: Inside The NY Times, Rampart. (14)
Still Haven’t Seen ‘Em Yet: Margaret, Weekend, Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol (3)
Good & Generally Approved With Issues (in this order): Take Shelter, A Better Life, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Ides of March, Midnight in Paris, A Dangerous Method, Albert Nobbs, J. Edgar, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Applause, Melancholia, The Lincoln Lawyer, Another Happy Day, Source Code, Point Blank, Cedar Rapids, The Iron Lady, Happy Happy, Super, The Housemaid, Carnage, Another Earth, Le Havre. (23)
Decent, Not Half Bad: Coriolanus, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, Insidious, The Last Lions, Myth of the American Sleepover, Tabloid, Super 8, The Trip, Making The Boys (doc about Mart Crowley and The Boys in the Band), Jane Eyre, Paranormal Activity 3, Restless, Submarine, Take This Waltz, Thor, Meet Monica Valour, Rango. (18)
Approved But Lesser Almodovar: The Skin I Live In. (1)
Lesser Dardennes: The Kid With A Bike. (1)
Lesser Kiarostami: Certified Copy (1)
Respectable Intentions, Didn’t Get There: Meek’s Cutoff, London Boulevard, Texas Killing Fields, Warrior, Straw Dogs, The Way Back, Like Crazy, The Rum Diary, Sleeping Beauty, The Adjustment Bureau, The Company Men, White Irish Drinkers, The Devil’s Double, The Dilemma, Warrior, We Bought A Zoo, Wuthering Heights, Anonymous. (19)
Meh, Underbaked, Less is Less, Insufficient: Rubber, Ceremony, Hall Pass, Bullhead, Fright Night, The Help, Magic Trip, Our Idiot Brother. (8)
Most Dislikable Sundance 2011 Film: Bellflower. (1)
Regretful Shortfallers: 30 Minutes Or Less, The Beaver, Higher Ground, Knuckle, Larry Crowne, Limitless. (6)
Haven’t Seen ‘Em (Guilt Factor): Black Power Mixtape, Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within, Jeff Who Lives At Home, The Last Circus, The Oranges, Paul Williams Still Alive, Project Nim, Red State, Pina, Pariah, The Deep Blue Sea, This Must Be The Place, The Turin Horse. (13)
Haven’t Seen ‘Em & Don’t Care That Much: Apollo 18, The Lady, Arthur Christmas, Soul Surfer, Henry’s Crime, Blank City, Cold Weather, Blackthorn, Bonsai, A Boy And His Samurai, Burke & Hare, Cars 2, The Catechism Cataclysm, Conan The Barbarian, The Double, Gnomeo & Juliet, Happy Feet 2, The Human Centipede II, I Am Number Four, Jack and Jill, Just Go With It, Kung-Fu Panda 2, The Muppets, Mars Needs Moms, My Sucky Teen Romance, No Strings Attached, Paul Williams Still Alive, Phillip The Fossil, Priest, The Sitter, The Smurfs, Snow Flower & The Secret Fan, Sound Of My Voice, The Thing, The Woman, The Three Musketeers, Alvin And The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. (38)
Acute Dislike, Blah, Nothing, Stinko: The Big Year, Arthur, Bad Teacher, Battle: Los Angeles, Butter, The Caller, Cat Run, The Change-Up, Cowboy & Aliens, Colombiana, Crazy, Stupid, Love, Dream House, Fast Five, Final Destination 5, Five Days of War, Footloose, Friends With Benefits, The Green Hornet, Green Lantern, Hall Pass, The Hangover Part II, Hobo With A Shotgun, Horrible Bosses, Kaboom, Machine Gun Preacher, New Year’s Eve, One Day, Paul, Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Red Riding Hood, Sucker Punch, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1, Tower Heist, Twixt, Water For Elephants, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Your Highness, The Zookeeper, Your Highness, Miral. (41)
I once spoke briefly to Angelina Jolie on the set of Salt, and I remember having to fight these odd feelings of unworthiness that arose from her being stunningly beautiful and my being…well, what I am. This happened again yesterday for a minute or two when she walked into room #1414 at the Four Seasons hotel to chat about In The Land of Blood and Honey, her Serb-Muslim love story-war drama that opens on 12.23. But I eventually won the battle and was able to focus on her words.
Here‘s what she was asked and what she said during our 28-minute session.
Jolie is very sharp. She thinks and talks fast, knows the world, quickly assembles and associates and draws lines between the dots. Now and then she’ll express herself (at least in front of journalists) with haphazard, on-the-fly sentences and half-formed thoughts, but nobody speaks as clearly and calmly as they’d like then the digital recorders are turned on.
And she is an ordered and disciplined type. The film itself — easily the equal of Michael Winterbottom‘s A Mighty Heart, and a much better thing, quality-wise, than most of her acting vehicles over the last ten years — makes that clear. I absolutely respect and admire In The Land of Blood and Honey as well as her efforts to make it as first-rate as possible. This is a very tight and well-executed drama — no shovelling, no exaggeration, no sensationalism. Just straight and true and real.
Set within the Serb-Muslim-Croat conflict of the early to mid ’90s, ITLOBAH isn’t a disparate-lovers story as much as a portrait of the very fine lines between a relationship that is lust one minute, safety and security the next, and always with a current of sadism and sadomasochism. The basic logline — “a Bosnian woman (Zana Marjanovic) submits to the tender passions of her Serbian captor (Goran Kostic)” — isn’t the half of it.
Jolie vision quote #1: “We want people to pay attention and want for timely intervention, some kind of dialogue, that if we could make people feel that in a visceral way…while they’re watching it, they’re angry and it’s coming, that would be the completion that they would walk away with. We tried to make a traditional film with characters and dialogue. [But] you can’t soften this kind of war, and the reality is that the four-and-a-half-hour cut was a lot worse [in the sense that] some people really could not handle it. If you’re watching a film about war, you should get a sense of what it’s really like.
Jolie, Jon Voight prior to Thursday’s In The Land of Blood and Honey premiere.
Jolie vision quote #2: “I remembered Bosnia-Herzogovina, it was my generation…I remember where I was at that time…it happened in Europe and I [asked myself] why do I not know very much about this? The more I researched it the more compelled I was to make it. People are still healing from this process, and it ‘s important not to [forget it]. Once the conflict is over the attention goes elsewhere, and proper healing is not done.
How the film came together: “I didn’t set out to be a director. I wrote it for myself because it was an experiment for me…to give myself this homework, and then [there was a story and] the cast came together and things started to happen and it somehow became real….but I wasn’t in the region and in many ways they directed me. In many ways they told me. I would ask ‘did we get this right? Did this sound right? Tell me how your neighbor’s baby died.’ I’ve had so many amazing directors in the past, and Clint [Eastwood] told me to have a good crew of people…a good creative family and no dramas. Talented but a nice person. We didn’t want not nice people [on the crew]. I wanted a family. And I learned from Michael Winterbottom [something].
On the differences between the English-language and Serb-Croatian version: “They’re two minutes off, actually. They’re the same movie but they feel different. I wrote it in English because I had to. We had it translated to make sure it was fair and balanced. They all spoke English, and those who didn’t [speak English] learned their lines pheonetically. We wanted it to be authentic, and yet….for us it’s not just about making a movie but about getting a message out. Maybe this theatre in this state say they won’t buy a foreign language film and we’ll say, okay, we have this [English-language] version also, can you take that? And then…the UK has bought the American, but maybe they’ll change their minds. The DVD [might] have both versions. I wish I could shout from the rooftops how good these [actors] are. I gave so much respect for them. I would like people to see this film just for that.
On the physical and logistical demands of shooting: “[The shoot was] very fast. We had 41 days and $12 million dollars, and we had three and a half years of war to cover and many, many different seasons. I learned a lot about how much snow costs. We used to joke about how ‘I want to snow this whole area’ and they’d say, ‘Well, that is $100,000 worth of snow’ and I’d say, ‘Well, what’s $20,000 dollars worth?’ And everything was doubled [because of the two versions]. Everything was doubled. We had to cut the script as we went. We had to invent things. But I kind of like working like that.
On directing: “I love being on the other side of the camera. I love watching an actor do an extraordinary job, and protecting her emotions and showing her talent, and working with the crew and living in this world inside the movie. It’s a different way or working, and I think I prefer it [to acting]. I wasn’t the center of attention. I was the buddy in the corner with a paper pad and a pencil, and it was lovely.”
On the reported Afghanistan project she’s working on and may (or may not) direct down the road: “Between me and Graham, it was this idea. As he writes, it was kind what do you have and I said I have this thing. No one has seen it. It’s just something I wrote and i have on my desk, and now it’s become something that I’m talking about it. But it stems from…I travelled to Pakistan first, two weeks before September 11th and I visited Aghan people there as they were being [evacuated] and on the buses in Kabul and over the last ten years I’ve tracked some families…and on the other side of it I visited a lot of soldiers, wounded solders in Ramstein and Walter Reade, and met a lot of female soldiers…and the question that frustrates me is that they say they’re not in combat and yet they’re dying in combat, and this level of respect for women in the field, and what a female solider goes through, relationships between men and women when women are at war, and what it is for a mother to leave her children…so it’s kind of a study in that, and that’s how I came at it, and I don’t know…I dont know if I’ll ever show it to anybody. But that’s [what it is].”
I have to leave in a few for round-table interviews at the Four Seasons for Angelina Jolie‘s In The Land of Blood and Honey. Everyone is looking to get what they want from these things, but whenever an object of tabloid fascination like Jolie sits down at the table, it’s highly likely that some ninny is going to go “off-topic” and ask some idiotic, inane, downmarket question. This is always cause for major eye-rolling, and is one reason why I hate these occasions. Hell, sometimes, is other journalists.
1:25 pm Update: Then again surprises happen from time to time. I’ve just returned from the Blood and Honey junket, and the q & a with Jolie was perfectly fine. In room #1414, at least. Nobody asked any inane tabloid questions. One person asked if handling a brood of seven children was analogous to directing a film, but that was allowable, I felt.
Yesterday afternoon I saw Angelina Jolie‘s In The Land of Blood and Honey, and liked it a lot. I asked for permission to say a little something and was told nope, the embargo holds…fine. This morning I saw David Fincher‘s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and I liked that too. But I can’t write about it until 12.13. And now I’m sitting in a food court and not arguing with anyone about seating. All is well. Just saying.
A lot of year-end awards stuff will come into focus over the next nine days. Tomorrow afternoon the journos who weren’t invited to see The Iron Lady at last Thursday’s super-exclusive screening will get their own looksee. By next weekend the Warner Bros. guys will almost certainly be screening Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close for the New York Film Critics Circle and National Board of Review in preparation for the following week’s voting. And then comes the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo screening on Monday, 11.28, for the same two groups.
All the frontline stragglers who haven’t yet seen War Horse will get their shot on 11.28 in Los Angeles, and (I’m told) on 11.29 in NYC. And wouldn’t it make sense, by the way, for Film District to screen Angelina Jolie‘s In The Land of Blood and Honey (which mubi.com‘s David Ehrenstein has called “as serious as a heart attack“) for the NYFCC and NBR also? The big finale comes when the NYFCC votes on Tuesday, 11.29, and the NBR the next day, and for two or three weeks after that we’ll hear from a cavalcade of critics groups (with the exception of the slowboat National Society of Film Critics, which announces in early January).
It may well be that War Horse will sweep everyone away, myself included. I’m saying that with sincerity. “I’m just average common too, I’m just like him and the same as you” and if a movie really works, it works. But before the deluge and the Zelig impulse kicks in I’m asking each and every critic out there to please think twice before voting. If your sensibilities and judgment permit it, don’t sap out and go “whee!” and just jump on the easy bandwagon. Please. Please.
Deadline‘s Mike Fleming is reporting that the English-language version of Angelina Jolie‘s In The Land Of Blood And Honey will not be released in English-speaking territories or anywhere else for that matter. Instead FilmDistrict will release the version that Jolie shot in the language once known as Serbian-Croatian and now called Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian .(It’s also called Bosanski/Hrvatski/Srpski or BHS. It’s also known as Splotnee-Gloob-Glooby-Slobonik, if you’re from the part of the world.). The film, slated to open in NY and LA on 12.23, will obviously carry subtitles. Which means that the subtitle-averse brainiacs out there are going to take a pass…right?