Steve Jobs screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has rehashed his “unethical American journalists exploited the Sony hack for their puny contemptible gains” riff in a 9.29 Hollywood Reporter piece by Alex Ritman, which stems from quotes Sorkin gave during a London round-table discussion.
“The worst part [of the Sony hack] was seeing the American press as a willing accomplice, an eager accomplice to terrorism,” Sorkin said, repeating a view that hit the press on or about 12.17.14. “I don’t know how these reporters who printed the stuff can look at themselves in the morning.” He stated that the Sony hack was a “low point” for the American press, which he claimed had “absolutely aided and abetted terrorism.”
Sorkin believes that journos should have ignored the hacked material, adding that “you cannot tell me that an argument about Angelina Jolie is newsworthy or what Cameron Crowe’s troubles are in post-production on Aloha is newsworthy or any of the Steve Jobs stuff was newsworthy.”
Earlier today Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil was telling me I have to make sure that my Gold Derby predictions square with my HE Oscar Balloon charts. He was focusing in particular on the Best Actress graph that I posted last Saturday in which I included Amy Schumer‘s Trainwreck performance in fifth or sixth place. Because I felt like it. Because now is the time for plugging your personal favorites every so often. I don’t give a damn if anyone agrees with me or not. I’m not placing bets at a dog track. It’s September and Schumer moved me, and so I included her. I’m just saying she deserves a shout-out. I don’t care if you don’t agree. I know what I know.
Earlier today David Poland tweeted that my Best Actress chart was “idiotic.” You know what’s idiotic or at least seriously lame? Ignoring your own aesthetic instincts so you can appear to be “right” in predicting likely favorites in late fucking September. I’ll play the prediction game to some extent but I reserve the right to promote exceptional work, regardless of how likely this or that choice may seem to Sasha Stone or Glenn Whipp or Scott Mantz. There’s plenty of time to start narrowing things down in late October, November and December.
What if Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster and Laurence Olivier costarred in a first-rate historical war satire at the peak of their respective popularity and power in 1959, and nobody cared all that much when it opened and nobody at all (except for guys like me) gives a damn about it today? 20 months ago I posted a piece about how it was impossible to watch The Devil’s Disciple, a respectable, vigorously acted adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s 1897 play about the Revolutionary War, outside of an annual July 4th airing by TCM. I reported that the black-and-white drama, directed by Guy Hamilton (Goldfinger, Thunderball), wasn’t on DVD or Bluray, and that you couldn’t stream it on Netflix, Hulu or Vudu. But now, lo and behold, a Bluray version from Kino will street on 11.24.15.
Two days ago MCN’s David Polandsuggested that Spotlight might be this year’s Argo, only better. What is an Argo/Spotlight flick? A team of earnest professionals — The Avengers in a real-life, human-scale mode — pool their resources to solve or significantly impact a real-life problem. But that’s where the similarity ends. Argobent or fabricated facts and threw in a little Hollywood bullshit (emotional caressings, smart-assy dialogue, fake-suspense endings) to sweeten the package. Spotlight is a lean, strictly-business, bullshit-free dramatization of a landmark investigative report by the Boston Globe about widespread perversion and corruption in the Catholic church. It operates on a plane way, way above Argo.
Let’s clear the air. ThosewhocalledArgoa Best Picture humdinger when it first screened during the 2012 fall festivals have since felt twinges of regret. It won the Best Picture Oscar only because there was nowhere else to go after the stinking Stalinist takedown of Zero Dark Thirty — easily the finest Best Picture nominee of 2012 — and because not enough voters were able to realize what an inspired, once-in-a-blue-moon, 21st Century anxiety romcom Silver Linings Playbook was (partly due to HE commentariat pissheads who wouldn’t stop slagging it).
Argo was the last Best Picture contender standing. It won by a default fallback situation. It won by way of a huge collective “why not?” — basically a shrugging of shoulders.
I always enjoyed and admired Argo as far as it went, but when the “oh, my God!” reactions started pouring in I stepped back and said, “Wait, wait, wait…hold on.” Just to refresh everyone’s memory, here’s what I wrote on 9.14.12, or only a few days after Argo‘s first Telluride screening:
Excerpt #1: “What’s this Argo obsession that Sasha Stone, Kris Tapley and Roger Ebert are putting out? Drop to their knees in worship? What film can steal its Best Picture thunder? Will you guys please take it easy? Argo is a very fine thing — a well-crafted, highly satisfying caper film with a certain patriotic resonance that basically says ‘job well done, guys…you should be proud.’ But the hosannahs are a bit much.
The title of Michael Moore‘s Where To Invade Next, which had its big debut last night at Toronto’s Princess of Wales theatre, suggests some kind of satirical jeremiad against American military interventionism over the last six or seven decades. Nope — it’s actually an amusing, alpha-wavey, selectively factual love letter to the kind of European Democratic socialism that Bernie Sanders has been espousing for years. And it’s funny and illuminating and generally soothing (unless you’re a rightie). A distributor I know called it “toothless,” which is arguably true if you want to put it that way, but the film is engaging in an alpha, up-with-people sense. It’s basically an argument in favor of “we” values and policies over the “me and mine” theology that lies of the heart of the American dream.
The primary theme of Sanders’s domestic philosophy is that benefits for working Joes are far more bountiful in many European countries (France, Italy, Finland, Norway, Slovenia, Portugal), and that we should try to humanize American life by instituting some of their social policies. He’s talking higher taxes, yes, but guaranteed health care, free universities, longer vacations (up to 35 days per year in Italy), a far less predatory work environment, better school-cafeteria food, more relaxation and apparently more sex, etc.
By any semi-humane measuring stick this is a much more attractive, more dignity-affirming way of life — imperfect and fraught with the usual problems, but far preferable, it seems, to the ruggedly Darwinian, rough-and-tumble, wealth-favoring oligarchial system that Americans are currently saddled with.
Moore simplifies like any documentarian trying to reach a mass audience. I’m sure there are many, many problems in Democratic socialist countries that he’s ignoring and then some. As Screen Daily‘s Allan Hunternotes, “Some of the people who actually live in those countries might find [Moore’s] views a little starry-eyed and unsophisticated.” But I strongly doubt that Moore has fabricated anything here.
Paolo Sorrentino‘s Youth “is a visually poetic, beautifully captured, symphony-like film, which is what Sorrentino does, of course. This has been his signature style in The Great Beauty and Il Divo (let’s ignore This Must Be The Place) and here’s the same tray of gourmet delights — deliciously photographed, serenely scored, composition for composition’s sake, drop-dead delectable, etc. And at the same time Youth is rather languid and swoony and a touch melancholy from time to time, and dryly amusing whenever Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel chew the fart fat while walking in the hills or sitting in a hot tub or sipping tea. But this is mostly a film that celebrates Sorrentino’s gifts as a visual composer.
“And I’ll tell you something. After a while I wanted a respite from all the beautiful framing and the luscious, perfectly lighted Swiss scenery. I wanted Caine and Keitel to take a train to Bern or Zurich on some pretext and hit a topless bar or something, if only for a few minutes respite from Sorrentino Land, which — don’t get me wrong — is a fine, rapturous place to be but which can feel, after a time, a bit narcotizing. You could even say that it offers a kind of confinement. It’s not that I don’t value it. I’m not an idiot. I’ve been savoring fine cinematography, editing and production design all my life, and I know what goes.
With the Gold Derby gang having begun to pull award-season predictions out of their ass, we might as well have fun by asking ourselves (with almost no firm knowledge about anything and with the b.s. factor piled higher than an elephant’s eye) a subversive question of sorts: Which of the presumably Oscar-friendly headliners may experience the hype-and-crash syndrome that befell Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken, Ava DuVernay‘s Selma and Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood last year?
This is a fool’s errand as every film has its own path to follow and no two Oscar-season experiences are the same, but let’s play this stupid game anyway. For those who were living in caves in Northern India during last year’s Oscar season with no wifi access, here’s a recap of what happened with these three.
Starting in late summer and all through September, October and November, several Oscar handicappers had Unbroken at the top of their list of likely Best Picture candidates. Grit and survival in a Japanese POW camp, Coen brothers‘ script, Roger Deakins‘ cinematography…can’t be denied! And then Jolie’s film screened on Sunday, 11.30 at the WGA theatre on Doheny and it fucking collapsed. The air just whooshed out. High levels of craft but too labored, too Christian, too torture-porny. It was respectably reviewed and made $115 million domestic, but the Oscar game was stillborn when everyone realized it was more or less The Passion of the Christ revisited — a stealth Christian film.
Tom Hiddleston seems to offer a near-perfect physical reincarnation of the late Hank Williams in Marc Abraham‘s I Saw the Light (Sony Pictures Classics, 11.27). He’ll most likely be impressive in other respects. Directed, written and produced by Abraham and based on “Hank Williams: The Biography” by Colin Escott, George Merritt and Bill MacEwen. The question is when & where will I Saw The Light start to be seen…Telluride, Toronto or you-tell-me?
Tom Hiddleston as Hank Williams in Marc Abraham’s I Saw The Light (SPC, 11.27)
This is basically nothing apart from that one Leni Reifenstahl shot of rows and rows of troops, which of course is a steal from the final scene of Episode 4. And that shot of some red-tinted helmet dude going “stop” like he’s a traffic cop in a ballet? That’s no good, man. Seen this before, that before…it’s Force Awakens jizz whizz. I’m already sick of that shot of Kylo Ren flashing his light sabre in the dark woods. Give me fresh material or give me nothing. Make me wait for the good stuff.
Sony Pictures Classics has announced an acquisition of worldwide rights to Don Cheadle’s Miles Ahead, a Miles Davis biopic that will close the New York Film Festival on Sunday, 10.11. It may or may not be significant that the release doesn’t say when SPC will release the film, which obviously indicates that they may be looking at ’16 rather than the 2015 award season. If (and I say “if”) a 2015 release is off the table, that tells you something right there. I also went “uh-oh” when I came across a statement from Cheadle that says the film was made “with the family’s blessing.” I’ve always believed that when it comes to telling stories of famous dead guys who lived on the razor’s edge, it’s better if your film unsettles or even agitates the family. The stamp of family approval (Erin and Cheryl Davis, the late trumpeter’s son and daughter, are executive producers) doesn’t always mean the film has been compromised or blanded down in some way, but it often does. Boilerplate: “[Pic] tells the story of a few lost days in the life of Davis (Cheadle), the virtuoso, fighter and genius, as he bursts out of his silent period, conspires with a Rolling Stone writer (McGregor) to steal back his music, and relives the years he had with his great love, Frances Taylor (Corinealdi).”
Okay, I agree that Jon Watts‘ Cop Car (Focus Word, 8.7) could be more inventively plotted. But the plot that Watts and cowriter Christopher Ford went with isn’t bad — it’s certainly servicable — and I therefore feel it’s really unfair to dismiss a film because the plot points aren’t as clever as they might have been if Watts had listened to this or that critic’s suggestions during early story meetings. They’re good enough, and besides Cop Car isn’t about would-be cleverness as much as high-end craft and sly, sardonic humor that you’ll either get or you won’t.
This is a highly sophisticated, almost-arthouse-level B movie. It’s a popcorn thing, but in a well-ordered, darkly amusing Coen Brothers way. Blood Simple-like. Okay, it’s Coen Brothers light, but good enough for me. It’ll be good enough for nearly everyone, trust me. Don’t listen to the cranky critics who have brought the Rotten Tomatoes average down to 72%.
The basic drill is about two young boys with semi-anarchic attitudes (James Freedson-Jackson, Hays Wellford) finding a seemingly abandoned cop car hidden in a semi-secluded glade amidst wide-open fields in rural Colorado. They eventually goad each other into taking the car for a wild-ass joyride, and then they enjoy some recreational highs with some weapons they’ve found in the back seat. Time of your life…huh, kid?
It’s entirely possible that Marc Abraham‘s I Saw The Light (Sony Pictures Classics, 11.27), the Hank Williams biopic costarring Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen, will have its first peek-out at the 2015 Telluride Film Festival (9.4 through 9.7). SPC and Telluride have longstanding ties, and it’s already understood the SPC’s Truth and Son of Saul (which world-preemed at Last May’s Cannes Film Festival) will screen at that Colorado gathering. Or…whatever, it could also debut at the Toronto Film Festival. We’ll know on Tuesday when Toronto announces some of the bigger films on its slate.
I Saw The Light costars (and the off-screen entwined) Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen.
Andrey and Hank Williams with their two kids sometime in the late 1940s.
I’ve heard from a research-screening source about I Saw The Light, which apparently runs in the vicinity of two hours. Hiddleston is said to be strongly invested as Williams but Olsen’s performance as his wife and musical partner Audrey is said to be the real-stand-out. The second-hand source passed along adjectives like “unreal” and “scene-stealing,” and said Olsen could wind up as a Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress contender, as her performance is right on the edge between lead or supporting. Hiddleston and Olsen have been in a relationship since the film shot last year, but if she does indeed steal the film acting-wise (and again, this is just one guy talking so take it with a grain)…well, do the math. Hiddleston is no doubt expecting Light to be a major career-booster.