Four nights ago August: Osage County‘s Meryl Streep, Margo Martindale and Abigail Breslin dropped by for a post-screening q & a at Pete Hammond‘s KCET film series in North Hollywood. It was the final screening of the ’13 series. There’s a sameness to on-stage, post-screening interviews. You can’t step too far outside of the routine. But there’s always something refreshing and even calming about Streep’s manner of sharing. She always seems to be reaching deep inside for something semi-spontaneous. And she’s never given a rote performance, of course. August: Osage County opens in NY & LA on 12.27.
The Hill
I sat down with Wolf of Wall Street costar Jonah Hill at the Soho Mondrian between 4:10 and 5:25 pm. We covered almost everything. I recorded it all. I’ll type up most of it and tap something out tomorrow. Hill’s portrayal of Donnie Azoff, partner in stock-fraud crime and quaalude comrade of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), will live forever in the annals of motion-picture bacchanalia. Which is one way of saying it’s a superb performance. Oh, and by the way: today is Jonah’s 30th birthday. Go to the 32-minute mark for Hill’s interview on the 12.19 Charlie Rose Show.
Howl, or Best Foreign Pic Shortlist
I haven’t seen the majority of the nine films on the Academy’s just-announced Best Foreign Language Feature shortlist, but I know for a dead cold fact that Asghar Farhadi‘s masterful The Past, which didn’t make the cut, is a much, much better film than Thomas Vinterberg‘s The Hunt, which did make it…much.
Wong Kar Wai‘s The Grandmaster, which no one who knows anything has done cartwheels or backflips over, made the list but Haifaa Al-Mansour‘s widely praised Wadjda, the Saudi Arabian entry, didn’t? Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn must have punched the refrigerator door at least once.
Obviously a dark day for Sony Pictures Classics, the U.S. distributor of Wadjda and The Past. Life isn’t unfair — it’s infuriating.
Concrete Under Your Feet
I landed at Kennedy around 10 pm last night. 45 minutes (!) for the bags to finally appear on the carousel. Gypsy cab into Manhattan for $60 bills, and the guy avoided the LIE (or one of the highways heading into town) to avoid paying the toll. Awoke at 9 am or 6 am L.A. time. A Jonah Hill chat is set to happen downtown around 4 pm. Nothing wrong with a little relaxation from time to time. I have to get in touch with Glenn Kenny to…actually, maybe I should hold back on paying him that $50 I bet on American Hustle winning the Best Picture Oscar. It might just make it. The Movie Godz are foursquare against Gravity winning, I can tell you that. A Best Picture winner has to have some kind of social, political or psychological undercurrent — it has to say or reflect something about who we are (or who we used to be or want to be). Gravity says absolutely nothing except that we all want to survive — big deal.
“Think Fast”
A two-minute, nine-second fragment of last night’s Charlie Rose interview with The Wolf of Wall Street director Martin Scorsese and star-producer Leonardo DiCaprio.
When Did Cukor Peak?
Results of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s George Cukor poll were posted today. While there was no runaway favorite, Holiday, Sylvia Scarlet and A Star Is Born were named most often. Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn agreed with me that Rich and Famous seems to pop through with a bit more pizazz and audacity. My fallback choice will always be Holiday.
“When I Felt His Hot Breath…”
An idea hit me this morning. The idea (and you can’t be too literal or specific-minded when you ponder this) is that the basic dynamic in this conversation is a metaphor for the back-and-forth between myself and some HE comment-threaders. I believe that I am both Lou Costello and the miserable wanderer, and HE readers are the miserable wanderer. Or something like that.
Eyes Of God
A&E executives have no choice but to hold fast regarding their decision to indefinitely suspend Duck Dynasty‘s Phil Robertson for his dumbshit anti-gay comments in a just-published GQ interview. Hinterland yahoos rallied strongly yesterday in defense of Phil and against A&E’s decision, but if the A&E guys buckle they will be regarded by history as lily-livered wimps. The bottom line, as noted by N.Y. Times reporter Bill Carter, is that “it will be a long time before any viewer even notices the suspension. The next edition of nine Duck Dynasty episodes has already been completed and the episodes will begin next month. Robertson will be prominently seen in all of them. The suspension will affect only future episodes, which have not yet been shot and will not be seen for months.”
Plague of CG Dancers
Decent song, spirited mood, DeGeneres brings it…but why couldn’t they use live dancers? Why couldn’t they choreograph it the old-fashioned way and shoot it organically? I love it when CG doesn’t look like anything, and hate it when it does. Even if I’m wrong and it was shot live (which I seriously, seriously doubt), I still hate it. Imagine Michael Jackson‘s Thriller video with CG dancers. Imagine West Side Story with CG-ed Jets and Sharks.
Small Potatoes
“For all the considerable pain Stratton Oakmont inflicted on its investors, here is something you should remember. It doesn’t even begin to approach the kind of pain the real Wall Street can inflict. Firms like Stratton Oakmont can’t bring the financial system to the precipice. They can’t cause a global recession. They can’t cause panic in London, New York and every other financial capital. To use Stratton Oakmont to represent Wall Street doesn’t begin to get at Wall Street’s sins.” –The final graph in Joe Nocera‘s 12.22 N.Y. Times piece, “Sex and Drugs and I.P.O.’s– Martin Scorsese’s Approach in The Wolf of Wall Street.” (Nocera is a business/op-ed columnist for the Times. He also does business commentary for NPR’s Weekend Edition.)
Depp, Pfister, Freeman, Mara, Hall, Murphy
Artificial intelligence, etc. The airborne wifi won’t let me watch this one either. When directors of photography direct a film, some subtle but necessary ingredient always seems to be missing. Does this trailer indicate that Wally Pfister, Chris Nolan‘s dp of choice since Memento, might be the exception to the rule?
Best Reciprocal Wolf Review Yet?
Little White Lies‘ Calum Marsh has absorbed the madhouse saliva insanity of Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street and turned right around and injected almost the same kind of energy (on Scorsese’s part as well as DiCaprio/Belfort’s) into his review — the best way to respond to a film one really likes, no? Your review becomes the film and vice versa.
Marsh begins talking about the somewhat staid late-period films that acknowledged masters in their 70s or older have made.
“But there is another, less common variety of late period film, those which in their vitality and esprit defy the ageing of their maker — films whose history is either digested or divested, purged of its unwieldy weight, preferring instead to sprint lightly toward the new. The Wolf of Wall Street is one such film — perhaps even the such film: a nimble, impossibly jocund thing, it throbs and pulsates with life, eager to sop up the world’s generous excess. This is a film of extraordinary jejunity; its manner is raucous, sprightly, unhinged. It barrels through its 179-minute running time, spending scarcely a moment in repose, sprinting there and back without any need for breath or pause.