Two nights ago the Rome Film Festival did a bold and original thing by giving Scarlett Johansson its Best Actress award for her voice-over performance in Spike Jonze’s Her. I said in my initial reaction that this is Johansson’s best performance ever, and she doesn’t even appear on-screen. It would be very, very cool if SAG or the Academy or even the HFPA were to honor her with at least a nomination. (SAG conservatives wouldn’t touch this if Scarjo were voicing some kind of Avatar-like CG character, but she simply acted with her voice so where’s the threat?) Congrats also to Dallas Buyer’s Club‘s Matthew McConaughey for snagging the fest’s Best Actor prize, and to DBC itself for winning the BNL Audience Award for Best Film. Scott Cooper‘s Out of the Furnace was also named Best First or Second Feature.
Woody Allen Gave Me Same Look Once
This guy didn’t like it when I started snapping pictures. First he gave me one of those “are you about to steal a little piece of my soul?” expressions that I’ve seen every time I’ve taken a random quickie of this or that unprepared human. Then he came over and stuck his arm through the bars and swatted me across the forehead. He wasn’t trying to hurt me. He didn’t try to scratch or cut my skin with his nails. It was just a mild “fuck you and your camera” swat. He made his point. I ignored him completely but I understood what he was saying.
Ha Long Diversion
The drive from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay is no picnic. Three hours and change, lots of traffic, two-lane blacktop, road construction, etc. And submitting to a Ha Long Bay tourist cruise aboard the Annam Junk made me feel like a very well-treated steer. I just don’t like being herded along. But the area is one of God’s greatest creations and the Vietnamese tourism industry tries very hard to make everyone feel special and honored so I should just ease up and call it a nice pleasant time. Which it was.
Best Actress Club
Yesterday HE commenter “Morpheus” and HE’s own LexG (i.e., “Ray Quick”) briefly discussed the differences between the Best Actor and Best Actress realms. Please understand I am not signaling 100% agreement with Lex’s comment but he’s hit on something worth sharing, I think.
Morpheus: “It’s sad how year after year it is far more exciting to talk about the Best Actor field than it is to talk about the Best Actress field. It’s so weak [and] has been so weak that Streep needs only make a movie to be in contention. If Daniel Day Lewis was a woman he’d [have] won it for not only Gangs Of New York but also for The Crucible.”
Ray Quick: “That’s because the field is exclusive year in and year out to the same campy blowsy hens who eschew romcoms or visual sexiness to give ball-busting BIG performances — Streep, Blanchett, Winslet, Adams…all the same CANNED FUCKING HAMS while subtler, nuanced [performances] like those from Brie Larson or Saoirse Ronan get overlooked, and we all coo and awwww around the yearly inevitable BA/BSA ‘fifth’ spot for some newcomer/flash-in-the-pan, hot chick, kid with weird name who just cut to the front of the line like an Armenian guy at an airport queue.”
Lex is referring, of course, to Blue Is The Warmest Color‘s Adele Exarchpoulos.
No Dallas Schmoozer For Me
If I was back in Los Angeles I would be at the Dallas Buyer’s Club party at Craft in Century City, which began about an hour ago (i.e., 1:30 pm). I’m there in spirit! The last time I checked Focus Features was still stiffing award-focused Hollywood sites with a “sorry, no ads” policy, but this has no bearing on our enthusiasm for the film, of course. Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, Jennifer Lawrence in attendance along with screenwriters Craig Borten and Melissa Wallack and producer Robbie Brenner, among others.
Darkness Before Dawn
It’s 5:05 am on Monday morning, and I’ve been awake since 3:30 am. I’m sitting in warm, quiet darkness on the rear deck of a Ha Long-based “junk.” The ship is gently bobbing in the not quite placid waters. The white lights of other craft are softly beaming in the distance. A full moon is peeking through cloudy skies. Large, craggy, bullet-shaped mountains surround the bay. The junk guys have shut off the generator so it’s just me and my thoughts and the soothing, pre-dawn solitude. Along with my iPhone and fully-charged MacBook Pro, I mean. Thank God for the Viettel connectivity — two bars but it’s good enough.
Hintings, Translations
USA Today stepped into shit today when one of their presumably older, less-hip editors ran a box-office story with a racially gauche headline: ” ‘[Best Man] Holiday’ Nearly Beat ‘Thor’ as Race-Themed Films Soar.” The tweets hit the fan and so the newspaper changed “Race-Themed” to “Ethnically Diverse.” What they meant to say was “Mildly Shitty Romcom (64% On Rotten Tomatoes) Primarily Aimed at ‘Urban’ Audiences Does Almost As Well as Mildly Shitty , CG-Driven Comic-Book Bullshit (66% RT) Primarily Aimed At Under-40 Primitives.” USA Today‘s obviously clumsy headline was a reverse-case cousin of the classic Variety headline “Stix Nix Hix Pix” as it sought to summarize a box-office response to a film in ethnic and/or cultural terms — a huge no-no in today’s politically correct environment. The sin was in the insensitive wording. Malcolm D. Lee’s film earned $30.5 million vs. $38.4 million snagged by Thor: The Dark World.
More Hustle Judgment
This latest American Hustle clip seems to be conveying the same under-message that those opening six minutes did. These late ’70s people with their atrocious hairstyles and clothing and borough accents are on the clueless side — under-educated, slow on the pickup. “Not bullshit…I read it in an ahhhtickle…thank God for me.”
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Vague Blues Over Blue Reception
Another neat event I’ll be missing due to the Vietnam journey is an evening reception for Blue Is The Warmest Color costars Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux at the French Consulate residence in Beverly Hills. Then again if I could attend I’d just be in conflict. Half of me would want to ask about Seydoux about the latest turn in her quote war with director Abdellatif Kechiche, and the other half would want to duck that topic because everyone else has been harping on it. The result is that I would probably just stand around and not say anything to anyone. I can’t ask the same question that everyone is asking — I have to ask something original. What are the chances that the forthcoming special edition Criterion Bluray (i.e., not the bare-bones version coming on on 2.11.14) will get into the Kechiche-Seydoux spat? Zilch.
Stirrings, Servings, Clink of Drinks
In a Hitfix report about Friday night’s Fox Searchlight “holiday” gathering at Cecconi’s (which I would have loved to attend), Gregg Ellwood says something startling (to me anyway) while referencing a chat with 12 Years A Slave star Chiwetel Ejiofor. I’ve been hearing all along that the Best Actor situation is between Ejiofor vs. All Is Lost‘s Robert Redford. But Ellwood says it’s “clearly” between CE and Dallas Buyer’s Club‘s Matthew McConaughey for the win. That wasn’t the 11.6 consensus among the MCN Gurus of Gold, although the Gold Derby gang is sensing more of a three-way toss-up. So there’s a McConaughey surge?
Hour Of The Wolf
I shouldn’t have crashed last night around 6 pm (3 am L.A. time) but I did, and now I’m paying the price. It’s 3:12 am in Hanoi (or just past noon back home) and I’m stone-cold awake. Yes, it’s Sunday here and we’re all leaving for Ha Long at 7:45 am. But at least I have Tunnel Bear, a VPN which allows access to U.S.-based streaming sites that are normally blocked if you’re outside the country. HE’s own Rian Johnson turned me on to Tunnel Bear last June in Paris. We met for Indian food at Angeethi (36 rue de la Roquette) as Johnson had just been to a Wagner opera at the Bastille Opera. Johnson also told me about Uber, an upscale, cool person’s taxi service that you can order online and which you turn to when there are no cabs due to rain or commuter demand.