A couple of days ago I read a close-to-final draft of Jon Spaihts‘ Passengers, a sci-fi drama which has been directed by Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game) with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence in the lead roles. Sony/Columbia will release it on 12.21.16. The presumption in some quarters (certainly on Anne Thompson’s part) is that it’ll qualify as an awards-level thing. And maybe it will.
Here’s the Wiki synopsis: “A spaceship, Starship Avalon, on its 120-year voyage to a distant colony planet known as the Homestead Colony and transporting 5,259 people, has a malfunction in two of its sleep chambers. As a result, two hibernation pods open prematurely and the two people that awoke are stranded on the spaceship, still 90 years from their destination.”
An HE state-of-the-race riff titled “Old Academy Farts, As Always, Are Calling The Shots,” posted on 1.4.15: “At this point, everyone wants to know which film is going to win Best Picture,” MCN’s David Poland has written. “Anyone who tells you they know the answer is pulling their own chain. [But] it is looking more and more like Boyhood vs. Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything with the latter two splitting, allowing Boyhood to win.
“Birdman is divisive, especially amongst older voters,” Poland wrote. “There are a number of reasons why Selma is unlikely to win and two years in a row of ‘historical dramas focused on race’ is amongst them, whether we like it or not. Grand Budapest Hotel is a bit too light and magical and Whiplash is too thin, however entertaining. [And] Nightcrawler is just too brutal to win.”
Concurrent HE comment: “I’m still waiting for a definitive sign that Boyhood is something more than a critics’ film, or more precisely a Steve Pond film. I’m not saying it isn’t that. Richard Linklater‘s Best Director campaign may indeed result in a win, but somebody needs to point out the solid indicators that say Boyhood‘s popularity is as deep and wide as the Jordan river. As much as I like and truly respect that film, I’m honestly questioning — unsure of — its strength amongst the fartists.”
This morning a N.Y. Times guy who had obviously read last night’s “Let It Go” post asked if I wanted to tap out 300 or 400 words about diversity in the film industry. I gave it a quick shot and sent it right off. He thanked me but said he’s heard from too many people deploring racial factors and asked me to try again. I said thanks anyway and no worries, but I’ll just post it myself:
There exists a certain constitution, sheen or formula that spells “Best Picture contender”, and the definition of these resides in the mind of your seasoned industry viewer. Many of whom look or sound like Kevin Costner or Bruce Feldman or Brenda Vaccaro or Rod Lurie or Rob Reiner or Hope Holiday, the actress from The Apartment who so angrily derided the crude bacchanalian aspects in The Wolf of Wall Street.
We all know what your classily generic, “aimed at older white people” Best Picture contender looks and behaves like — The King’s Speech, The Imitation Game, The Danish Girl. As lulling and tiresome as this equation is (British-favoring, tasteful, poised) there is still in these films an attempt to hone and refine and deliver some kind of thematic, observational summation. Who we are, what we are (or were), what this aspect or chapter in our lives amounts to in the end, etc.
Too few were willing or able to recognize this element in Cary Fukanaga‘s Beasts of No Nation, and the Academy’s failure in this regard is, many feel, arguably “racist.” This was the big 2015 outrage, if you ask me — not just a dismissal of Fukunaga’s art but a refusal to admit that the horrors of African tribal warfare are as much a part of our global narrative and social fabric as anything else.
From HE 9.5 review, posted from Telluride: “Carey Mulligan, looking appropriately hangdog for the most part, handles every line and scene like a master violinist. She’s always been my idea of a great beauty, but when she chooses to go there she has one of the saddest faces in movies right now. And I don’t mean gloomy. The strain, stress and suppressed rage of Maud’s life are legible in every look, line and gesture. Mulligan is fairly young (she just turned 30 last May) but she’s a natural old-soul type who conveys not just what Maud (a fictitious everywoman) is dealing with but the trials of 100,000 women before her, and without anything that looks like overt acting. All actors ‘sell it,’ of course, but the gifted ones make the wheel-turns and gear-shifts seem all but invisible.”
Suffragette director Sarah Gavron following Tuesday night’s premiere screening at Samuel Goldwyn Theatre.
Suffragette dp Edu Grau (r.), dp Svetlana Cvetko (Red Army, Inequality For All, Inside Job).
Sarah Gavron‘s Suffragette (Focus Features, 10.23) is the shit — a near-certain Best Picture contender and a cast-iron guarantee that Carey Mulligan will be Best Actress-nominated for her subdued but deeply emotional, fully riveting performance as Maud Watts, a married factory worker and mother of a young son who becomes drawn into the women’s suffrage movement in early 1900s London, just as the militant phase (led by the Women’s Social and Political Union, or WSPU) begins to kick in.
This is one top-tier, richly textured, throughly propulsive saga, and a good four or five times better than I expected it to be.
The Suffragette trailers were promising enough but the people at Focus Features had done a brilliant job of tamping down any expectations on a word-of-mouth basis. I’d come to suspect, based on a lack of any palpable advance excitement, that it might turn out to be a decent, good-enough film that could possibly provide a springboard for Mulligan…maybe. Well, it’s much more than that, such that I felt compelled explain to Gavron at the after-party that I was fairly gobsmacked.
Mulligan, looking appropriately hangdog for the most part, handles every line and scene like a master violinist. She’s always been my idea of a great beauty, but when she chooses to go there she has one of the saddest faces in movies right now. The strain, stress and suppressed rage of Maud’s life are legible in every look, line and gesture. Mulligan is fairly young (she just turned 30 last May) but she’s a natural old-soul type who conveys not just what Maud (a fictitious everywoman) is dealing with but the trials of 100,000 women before her, and without anything that looks like overt “acting.” All actors “sell it,” of course, but the gifted ones make the wheel-turns and gear-shifts seem all but invisible.
I was saying last night that her Suffragette perf is on the same footing with Mulligan’s career-making turn in An Education, but now, at 8:15 in the morning after less than six hours of shut-eye (and with my heart breaking over the realization that I’ve blown my shot at catching the 9 am screening of Spotlight), I’m thinking Maud is her signature role.
I’m a day late on this but was there any Oscar-telecast viewer in the entire world who didn’t assume that Imitation Game screenwriter Graham Moore was gay after that moving acceptance speech? Anyone? After the Oscars Moore told reporters he’s straight. Okay, fine…but he had to know how his words would be interpreted, especially after referencing the sadness of Alan Turing as he began. The important thing, of course, is that he said a good thing. Kids who feel weird or strange or different (as I definitely felt when I was 15 and 16) should own that and not worry. But Moore’s speech was a bit odd itself.
I intended to post these last night, but whoopee and then fatigue interfered:
Best Picture: Birdman — Alejandro G. Inarritu, John Lesher and James W. Skotchdopole; Best Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Birdman; Best Actor: Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything; Best Actress: Julianne Moore, Still Alice; Best Supporting Actor: J.K. Simmons, Whiplash; Best Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette, Boyhood.
Best Original Screenplay: Birdman – Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. and Armando Bo; Best Adapted Screenplay: The Imitation Game, Graham Moore; Best Cinematography: Birdman, Emannuel Lubezki; Best Film Editing: Whiplash, Tom Cross; Best Documentary Feature: Citizenfour — Laura Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy, Dirk Wilutzky.
9:03 pm: Lean, gray and grizzled Sean Penn presenting the Best Picture Oscar. “And the Oscar goes to…who gave this sonuvabitch his green card?…Birdman.” Inarritu: “Two Mexicans in a row? That’s suspicious, I guess.” That’s diversity, I think. “Michael was the guy who really…Michael was the guy.” Keaton: “Look, it’s great to be here…who am I kidding?” Inarritu gives a shout-out to fellow Mexicans and offers a plea for a fairer, more decent government in Mexico, and praises “this wonderful immigrant nation.”
8:55 pm: Matthew McConaughey handing out Best Actress Oscar to locked-in-stone Julianne Moore.
8:49 pm: Big Moment for Best Actor Oscar. Maybe Redmayne? Yup…he takes it! He was favored/predicted by the Gold Derby-ites so not a total surprise. “This belongs to all those people battling ALS…my staggering partner-in-crime Felicity Jones…director James Marsh.” Classy guy, top-rank performance…congrats.
8:40 pm: Ben Affleck about to hand out the Best Director Oscar, and the Oscar goes to Alejandro G. Inarritu. Big hug from Richard Linklater. Tonight I am wearing the real Michael Keaton tighty whities….for someone to win, some one has to lose…but for the real filmmakers, there can’t be defeat. This is a slow-motion kidn of moment.
8:35 pm: The Imitation Game‘s Graham Moore has won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. A very moving speech given by Moore on behalf of Alan Turing and to all the weird and different and alone-feeling kids out there. You’re good. Your time will come.
8:30 pm: Best Original Screenplay Oscar being announced by Eddie Murphy, and the Oscar goes to the four Birdman guys. That’s it, Boyhood gang. I love you but you’re done. The Grand Budapest Hotel was forecast by Gold Derby gang…thud.
8:22 pm: Best Original Score Oscar is being announced by Julie Andrews. The Theory of Everything is expected to win, of course, but it doesn’t! Alexandre Desplat‘s Grand Budapest Hotel score takes it! Four Budapest Oscars. For the fourth time this evening, Wes Anderson is thanked by a winner. Four wins for Budapest, three for Whiplash so far….right?
8:11 pm: This Oscar telecast has no bite, no snap, no real pizazz or feeling. Neal Patrick Harris has been agreeable but bland. The whole show has been kind of bland. Only the acceptance speeches — Common, John Legend, Patricia Arquette, J.K. Simmons — have delivered the deep-well memories. Lady Gaga is doing a fine job with her Sound of Music tribute and the great Julie Andrews coming on stage…but why do it in the first okace? I say give the hook to Craig Zadan and Neil Meron as Oscar-show producers. Time to move on, give someone else a chance.
8:06 pm: Did NPH just make a joke work? He’s been whiffing all night. The Best Song Oscar, I expect, will go to “Glory”….right? Yes. Well earned. “Right now, the struggle for freedom and justice is real. Selma is now…march on.” — Common and John Legend.
8:01 pm: The performance of “Glory,” the song from Selma, was easily the best of the evening. Emotional song, very emotional reaction.
7:49 pm: Here comes the Best Documentary Feature Oscar moment. The winner, as everyone knows, will be Citizenfour. And it is, of course. I’m a huge fan of Rory Kennedy‘s Last Days in Vietnam, but I worship Citizenfour. Well deserved.
7:47 pm: Too many emotional exhale blown-away pauses from Terrence Howard as he introduces The Imitation Game, Whiplash and Selma. Calm down.
7:43 pm: The Best Editing Oscar being presented by Benedict Cumberbatch and Naomi Watts, and the Oscar goes to Tom Cross for Whiplash. Boyhood was the predicted Gold Derby winner. This may be an indicator of something. Yo, Whiplash!
The 2014/15 Oscar season will experience a crashing finale seven days from now, and the Spirit Awards will happen the day before. (I’m picking up my Spirit press pass and ticket tomorrow.) Only two major Oscar caregories are generating suspense: Birdman vs. Boyhood for Best Picture and Alejandro G. Inarritu vs. Richard Linklater for Best Director. Except for the crazy BAFTAs all signs point to Birdman and Inarritu prevailing, but the Oscar blogoscenti keep insisting that the Academy membership is too hazy-minded to predict and that Boyhood and Linklater might pull off a surprise. Maybe. Both are striking first-rate achievements, and if the tide goes against Birdman…well, okay. The Godz won’t be happy but it won’t be a tragedy.
I can only imagine the elation that will spread across the land when Julianne Moore takes the Best Actress Oscar for a performance that everyone respects in a tedious film that almost everyone has either ignored or not even seen. Ditto when Eddie Redmayne prevails as Best Actor (I’ve pretty much given up on my Michael Keaton dream…an up-and-down career, world-class chops and a great Oscar narrative doesn’t count when you’re up against a cute British puppy dog). Double ditto when J.K. Simmons wins for Best Supporting Actor and Patricia Arquette takes it for Best Supporting Actress. And it’ll be cool when the authors of The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Imitation Game or Whiplash win the Best Original and Best Adapted Screenplay Oscars.
I’ll be watching with the usual bells on, of course, but I suspect I’ll be feeling bored much of the time and that I might have a problem or two with Neil Patrick Harris. But maybe not. Bring on 2015, which is looking like a hell of a year.
Best Picture: Should win/ought to win/favored by MovieGodz — Birdman; would win if American ticket-buyers had anything to say about it — American Sniper.
Best Director: Should win/ought to win/favored by MovieGodz — Birdman‘s Alejandro G. Inarritu. Might win and if so that’ll be okay — Boyhood‘s Richard Linklater.
About two thirds of the way through From Here To Eternity (’53), Burt Lancaster‘s Sgt. Warden says to Montgomery Clift‘s Private Prewitt, “I hear you’ve gone dippy over some dame down at the New Congress Club.” Well, Oscar season is about 85% or 90% finished with about two and a half weeks to go, and I’ve gone dippy with all the interview opportunities and articles about who might win and all the rest of the razmatazz. Everyone who lives off the award-season racket (myself included) is hammering away…bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. I was going really dippy last night during the two-and-a-half-hour Directors Panel at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. Hollywood Reporter award-season columnist Scott Feinberg did an excellent job of moderating but it just went on and on and on and on and on…I was playing it cool and professional in my front-row seat but I felt like I was drowning in quicksand. During Feinberg’s chat with Boyhood‘s Richard Linklater I noticed that the Austin-based filmmaker was blinking his eyes and steeling himself and looking at Feinberg as if to say, “You’re not going to quit, are you? You’re just going to keep coming, keep digging into my soul.”
And then Linklater suddenly became Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the River Kwai, damp and pale-faced and weak but determined not to collapse, as he sat in Sessue Hayakawa‘s bamboo residence. “You will not break me,” Linklater was saying silently to Feinberg, wearing an expression of what can only be described as profound determination mixed with spirit-sapping fatigue. He seemed even more existentially depleted than myself, and I’m starting to really tire of this shit. My heart went out to him. Feinberg took a sip of Sake, narrowed his eyes and said, “And so Colonel, I have decided that your officers will not have to do manual labor.” Linklater stiffened, stood up and walked out to the center of the stage. Foxcatcher‘s Bennett Miller, standing at stage right, widened his eyes and whispered to fellow directors Morten Tyldum (Imitation Game), Laura Poitras (Citizenfour) and Damian Chazelle (Whiplash), “He’s done it!” They all ran out and cheered and picked up Linklater and carried him off-stage on their shoulders. I have to say that Miller exuded the coolest vibe of all the directors. He had a throughly non-anxious, completely Zen attitude about this charade. Whatever was said or asked or joked about, Miller was serenity itself. He was the Dalai Lama.
Tonight the Santa Barbara Film Festival will honor five outstanding directors — Whiplash‘s Damian Chazelle, Boyhood‘s Richard Linklater, Foxcatcher‘s Bennett Miller, Citizenfour‘s Laura Poitras and The Imitation Game‘s Morten Tyldum. Moderator Scott Feinberg will, of course, be expected to avoid any questions that won’t be kissy-face in nature, but if he wanted to conduct a Mike Wallace-style interview, what would his questions be? Tyldum would be asked for his opinion on the Weinstein Co.’s “Honor The Man, Honor The Film” Phase Two campaign. Miller would be asked if his next film will be another creepy downer. Poitras would be asked to comment about some people’s opinion that it would have been somehow more noble for Edward Snowden to surrender to U.S. authorities and do a couple of decades in jail. Advance warning: I’m going to ask Chazelle to put on Ed Douglas’s “Yo, Whiplash!” hat so I can snap a photo.
A sage but familiar observation was repeated during last night’s Virtuosos panel at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. Selma star David Oyelowo was asked by Fandango’s Dave Karger about his reactions when both he and director Ava DuVernay failed to snag nominations for Best Actor and Best Director, which many felt were due. The fact is that 2014 was a brutally competitive year in the Best Actor category, and the bottom line is that Oyelowo, who delivered a forceful and impassioned performance as Dr. Martin Luther King, was (a) simply out-flanked by the four locks (Birdman‘s Michael Leaton, Theory‘s Eddie Redmayne, American Sniper‘s Bradley Cooper, The Imitation Game‘s Benedict Cumberbatch) and (b) failed to elbow aside the weak wildebeest in the pack, Foxcatcher‘s Steve Carell, apparently because Carell’s prosthetic nose trumped Oyelowo’s oratorical panache. And also because of the hoo-hah that broke out in December when it became clear that DuVernay had mischaracterized the actions and initiatives of President Lyndon B. Johnson during the months leading to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
But Oyelowo ignored all that and instead repeated a generic observation from the Hollywood Racism rulebook, which is that until recently the Academy has been more supportive of black performers who play kindly, acquiescent, put-upon characters rather than ones who’ve played forceful leaders and steely, stand-alone guys who don’t back off, like Denzel Washington‘s revolutionary in Spike Lee‘s Malcom X or Sidney Poitier‘s tough, principled detective in Norman Jewison‘s In The Heat of the Night. And yet among all of Morgan Freeman‘s Oscar nominated performances, his first was for playing the distinctly malevolent, non-kindly “Fast Black” in Street Smart (’87)