I wrote in the morning, caught a 1:30 pm screening of The Hate U Give, and then decided to write a bit more instead of seeing a 4:30 pm screening of Nadine Labaki‘s Capernaum, which I’ve seen twice now. Then it was over to the sprawling estate of Silvercup Studios honcho Stuart Suna. Ran into Rory Kennedy (Last Days in Vietnam) and First Man screenwriter Josh Singer, among others. Nobody wanted to talk about Brett Kavanaugh…too dispiriting.
Tomorrow morning I’ll drop by Bill McCuddy‘s East Hampton home for coffee and maybe a podcast chat, and then possibly catch a 2 pm Shoplifters screening. The Port Jefferson-to-Bridgeport ferry leaves around 6:15 pm.
Red-carpet tent at Stuart Suna’s East Hampton home.
The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg is reporting that the replacement for Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs will be chosen on Tuesday August 8th, and that the three top candidiates are Oscar-nominated actress Laura Dern, Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy and casting director David Rubin. Hollywood Elsewhere is hereby announcing its support for Kennedy, mainly because of my admiration and respect for two docs that she directed and produced, Ethel and Last Days in Vietnam, and because she’s smart, likable and gracious. At the same time I suspect that Dern will probably win because she’s been an industry presence since the mid ’80s or certainly since Wild At Heart (’90), and those who don’t know her well certainly know her mom and dad, Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern. Rubin hasn’t a chance against these two — he has no pizazz and doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page…please!
The 11th annual Black List (i.e., 2015’s best unproduced screenplays according to 250 film executives) was posted about a week ago. I’d like to read all of them, but I have a list of favorites — Spring Offensive, Blackfriars, Chappaquiddick, 105 And Rising (inspired by Last Days in Vietnam), All The Money In The World, I Believe in America/Francis and the Godfather, Mayday 109. Anyone with PDFs is requested to pass along the following:
SPRING OFFENSIVE by Matthew McInerney-Lacombe / Dr. Liz Scott, a British epidemiologist with the World Health Organization, fights to contain an outbreak of Ebola in Afghanistan’s war torn Helmand province as the Taliban’s assault on allied forces threatens to turn the localized outbreak into a global catastrophe.
STRONGER by John Pollono / The true story of Jeff Bauman, who after losing his legs in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, was an integral part of helping police to locate the suspects. (Now being made with Jake Gyllenhaal starring, David Gordon Green directing.)
BUBBLES by Isaac Adamson / A baby chimp is adopted by pop star Michael Jackson. Narrating his own story, Bubbles the Chimp details his life within The King of Pop’s inner circle through the scandals that later rocked Jackson’s life and eventually led to Bubbles’ release.
ROCKET by Jeffrey Gelber, Ryan Belenzon / Roger “The Rocket” Clemens, one of the greatest pitchers of all time, has 4672 strikeouts, 354 wins and a record 7 Cy Young awards. This is the story of why he is not in the Hall of Fame.
THE LIBERTINE by Ben Kopit / After the Head of the French National Assembly is placed under house arrest for accusations of sexual assault, he must live in a guarded apartment with his estranged wife until the case comes to a close.
MISS SLOANE by Jonathan “Jonny” Perera / A powerful lobbyist sacrifices her career on Capitol Hill so she can push through an amendment enforcing stricter federal laws regulating guns.
SEPTILLION TO ONE by Adam Perlman, Graham Sack / While a former FBI agent is working in the fraud unit of the Texas State Lottery investigating a woman who has mysteriously hit the lottery jackpot three times, he falls in love.
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!
I’ve made no secret of my admiration for Rory Kennedy‘s Last Days in Vietnam, which I first saw last June at L.A. FilmFest. It is, I feel, her best film ever and one of the two finest competing for the Best Feature-Length Documentary Oscar, the other being Laura Poitras‘s Citizenfour. Kennedy and I spoke this afternoon for about 17 minutes. She’s been making docs for 16 years, but I didn’t really pay attention until Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (’07), which pretty much everyone admired, and particularly the emotionally affecting Ethel, which I saw at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and later aired on HBO on 10.18.12. Last Days in Vietnam has made a big impression because of its humanity. It’s a doc about Americans who showed compassion and decency and stuck their neck out for their Vietnamese friends during the final days of the Vietnam War. I’ve told Kennedy before that it’s a shame Last Days will probably never be seen in Vietnam due to presumed objections over political content. The Hanoi government would probably argue with Kennedy’s portrayal of the victorious North Vietnamese forces looking to settle scores with thousands of South Vietnamese who threw in their lot with American forces, which of course they did. (Tens of thousands were murdered or otherwise taken to task.) Kennedy’s film doesn’t lie but her main thrust is not political or tactical criticism but an honoring of loyalty and humane instincts and taking care of your own. Nobody’s angry about the war over there any more. I visited Vietnam in 2012 and ’13, and my sense was that the citizens have moved on and are living in the present. The young guys I met in Hanoi, Hue and Hoi An were all into iPhones and iPads and making money and getting ahead as best they could. I think they’d understand and admire Kennedy’s doc if they had a chance to see it. Again, the mp3.
A few days ago Awards Daily contributor Ryan Adams created a cool Photoshopped Birdman image of myself and Michael Keaton that I really liked, and so I wrote him and said so and he responded with a thanks. The guy had been a belligerent punk and a salivating attack dog ever since hooking up with Sasha but all of a sudden he was being nice and I was saying to myself, “Okay…maybe he’s not 100% bad…maybe there’s a tolerable human side to this guy after all.” But last night he, Craig Kennedy and Sasha Stone trashed me a couple of times on their Awards Daily Oscar podcast when they discussed the LBJ/Selma thing. Boiled down they more or less said that if you side with the LBJ advocates you’re either (a) a “dinosaur” like Peter Bart or (b) a closet racist who can’t stand the idea of having to share control of the culture and the film industry with non-whites, and that (c) it’s cool for African American filmmakers to do a little distortion of their own in order to balance the scales.
“…[like people who] got behind their favorite and they’ve already bought in and laid their money down on the movie they like the best. Like Jeff Wells. With Birdman. He’s been the Birdman guy all year along. Any movie now that comes along and potentially, even remotely poses a threat to Birdman, he’s not gonna like. He’s not gonna like any movie that’s not Birdman. He’s gonna damn it with faint praise and he’s gonna slur it and slam it any way he can think of. And it’s a sleazy way to cover movies, I think.”
It’s “sleazy” to have a favorite and to be enthused about that? If you have a favorite film you’re only allowed to…what, say this two or three times, mildly and somewhat mushily, and then you have to shut up until Oscar season ends? I’ve never put other films down in order to build Birdman up…never. Over the course of 2014 I went apeshit for at least 27 films, and every review is easily findable on HE. I happen to like Birdman more than Boyhood, okay, but that doesn’t mean I don’t admire and respect Boyhood, and that I wouldn’t be totally fine if it wins the Best Picture Oscar.
The absence of the original Birdman screenplay among this morning’s WGA nominations is technical, as not all of the writers (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Nicolas Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr., Armando Bo) are guild members so that was a no-go. Kind of like Ken Kesey not getting into an ivy-league Delphi Epsilon fraternity in the mid ’50s. Selma wasn’t eligible either. What’s up with Guardians of the Galaxy getting an adapted screenplay nom? I respect the documentaru nomination for Last Days in Vietnam, but why was Citizenfour blanked? Between this and the PGA also blowing off Citizenfour, does Laura Poitras have reason for concern?
Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash script was nominated for Best Original Screenplay category, which goes against the Academy view that Whiplash is an adapted screenplay. The general view is that Whiplash will have an easier time of it in the adapted category.
15 Feature-Length Documentaries were short-listed today. There are, in alphabetical order, Art and Craft, The Case against 8, Citizen Koch, Citizenfour, Finding Vivian Maier, The Internet’s Own Boy, Jodorowsky’s Dune, Keep On Keepin’ On, The Kill Team, Last Days in Vietnam, Life Itself, The Overnighters, The Salt of the Earth, Tales of the Grim Sleeper and Virunga.
The final five, I’m guessing, will be Citizenfour, Finding Vivian Maier, Life Itself, Last Days in Vietnam and The Salt of the Earth.
Significant blowoffs include Gabe Polsky‘s Red Army (a shocker), Chiemi Kurosawa‘s Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, Claude Lanzmann‘s The Last of the Unjust, Iain Forsyth‘s 20,000 Days on Earth, Ryan McGarry‘s Code Black, Mark Levinson‘s Particle Fever, Joe Berlinger‘s Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger, Alex Gibney‘s Finding Fela and Andrew Rossi‘s Ivory Tower.
I’ve expanded my “pure as the driven snow” Best of 2014 list (originally posted on 11.20) to 27, having added Rob Marshall‘s Into The Woods, Hany Abu-Assad‘s Omar and Charlie McDowell‘s The One I Love to the second-tier 13-to-26 list. Adding Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Ida (which I’ve always regarded as a 2013 film although I understand that most see it as a 2014 release) and you’ve got 27. I’ll update once again after seeing Unbroken on Sunday night, 11.30, followed by Big Eyes and Exodus two or three days later. (I’m currently halfway through an online screener of Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s Winter Sleep.)
Top Twelve: 1. Birdman (d: Alejandro G. Inarritu); 2. Citizen Four (d: Laura Poitras); 3. Leviathan (d: Andrey Zvyagintsev); 4. Gone Girl (d: David Fincher, who took a film with an airport-lounge plot and made it into something much more resonant); 5. Boyhood (d: Richard Linklater); 6. A Most Violent Year (d: J.C. Chandor); 7. Wild Tales (d: Damian Szifron); 8. A Most Wanted Man (d: Anton Corbijn); 9. The Babadook (d: Jennifer Kent); 10. Locke (d: Steven Knight); 11. Nightcrawler (d: Dan Gilroy); 12. The Drop (d: Michael R. Roskam).
David Poland (@DavidPoland) tweeting the night before last to A.J. Schnack (@ajschnack) about the chances of Laura Poitras‘s Citizenfour to win the Best Feature-Length Documentary Oscar, or at least be voted one of the five nominees: “Doc branch isn’t shy about issues [so] CitizenFour is about 95% likely to be nominated. But it’s about 10% likely to win. Full Academy doesn’t like issues.”
Yes, I know — they like to feel emotionally stirred. Which is why Rory Kennedy‘s Last Days in Vietnam, which is about a few Americans risking the well-being of their careers in order to help their South Vietnamese friends escape retribution from the North Vietnamese just before the fall of Saigon. And yet some of us feel quite emotional — I think the word is actually “scared” — about the NSA having set up a vast domestic monitoring mechanism that will allow a “bad” government, should one ever be elected, to mess with people like George Orwell never imagined. Citizenfour is about a stand-up guy who went through a lot of grief in order to point this out and say to his countrymen and to the world, “Do you guys understand what’s happened here?” And Citizenfour caught this dramatic decision live, as it happened.
Forget the award-season bunker mentality, forget the odds, forget handicapping and definitely forget the passions of Joe Popcorn. For herewith is my almost final list of 2014’s finest films, totalling 23 and compiled with a focus on world-class coolness, aesthetic exceptionalism and serious envelope-pushing originality. Obviously I’ll update after seeing Unbroken, Into The Woods, Winter Sleep and Big Eyes. These are the personal bests that I’ll be happy to own in some high-def form (Bluray, Vudu HDX, whatever) and will be watching from time to time in years to come. It’s funny how the movies you’re supposed to like or are obliged to publicly support kind of fall away when you take yourself into a purist frame of mind. I’m not 100% locked into this order but it’s close to this:
Top Twelve: 1. Birdman (d: Alejandro G. Inarritu); 2. Citizen Four (d: Laura Poitras); 3. Leviathan (d: Andrey Zvyagintsev); 4. Gone Girl (d: David Fincher, who took a film with an airport-lounge plot and made it into something much more resonant); 5. Boyhood (d: Richard Linklater); 6. A Most Violent Year (d: J.C. Chandor); 7. Wild Tales (d: Damian Szifron); 8. A Most Wanted Man (d: Anton Corbijn); 9. The Babadook (d: Jennifer Kent); 10. Locke (d: Steven Knight); 11. Nightcrawler (d: Dan Gilroy); 12. The Drop (d: Michael R. Roskam).
Second-Tier Top Twelve: 13. Whiplash (d: Damian Chazelle), 14. The Theory of Everything (d: James Marsh); 15. The Imitation Game (d: Morten Tyldum); 16. The Grand Budapest Hotel (d: Wes Anderson); 17. Selma (d: Ava DuVernay); 18. Omar (d: Hany Abu-Assad); 19. Last Days in Vietnam (d: Rory Kennedy); 20. Life Itself (d: Steve James); 21. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (d: Matt Reeves); 22. Red Army, (d: Gabe Polsky); 22. Foxcatcher (d: Bennett Miller); 23. Edge of Tomorrow (d: Doug Liman); 24. The One I Love (d: Charlie McDowell).
134 films are up for the Best Feature Documentary Oscar. The list broke today. A shortlist of 15 films will be announced sometime in early December. The final five nominees will be announced on 1.15.15. I’ve seen only about 25 docs this year but I’m keeping close tabs and I’m guessing that the shortlisted will be among this list of 21. If there’s a major standout I’m missing, please advise. What embarassing omission will the the doc committee come up with this year? There will be hell to pay if Laura Poitras‘s Citizenfour doesn’t end up as one of the final five…just saying.