The just-released poster for Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska (Paramount, 11.22) tells you it’s a serious award-season film about the stark realities of aging. (Obviously similar to the 2002 one-sheet for Payne’s About Schmidt.) My white hair is so sparse that I might as well be bald plus I have a neck wattle plus I’ve won a million bucks from Publisher’s Clearing House plus I’ve been an abusive drunk for most of my life plus my old friends and relatives sit around their living rooms and watch TV like immobile zombies. No sedatives, no soothing bromides to speak of, no emotional comforts of the usual sort.

Read more

My first thought upon reading that Nancy Gibbs, 53, has become the first female managing editor of Time magazine in its 90-year history was that I stopped reading Time a little less than eight years ago when they ran that cover story about Steven Spielberg‘s Munich being a “secret masterpiece.” I’d been reading Time since I was twelve, but that story killed my allegiance. The only way I’d consider reading Time again would be if they literally published a “Time Advanced” edition — a three-year-old Onion riff.

As Woody Allen was the biggest and most influential supporter of Hollywood Elsewhere’s successful campaign to persuade Warner Home Video to release George Stevens‘ Shane in the original aspect ratio of 1.37 and not the dreaded 1.66 that had been plannned, I felt honor-bound to attend last night’s Manhattan screening of this 1953 classic because a videotaped message from Allen was part of the program. Ironically, the Academy projectionist projected Shane at an aspect ratio closer to 1.66 than 1.37 — approximately 1.5 or thereabouts. (I know exactly what the 1.37 version looks like and can say without the slightest doubt that the projectionist messed up.) Here’s what Allen had to say. I also spoke to guest presenter Adam Holender, the celebrated, still-active director of photography of Midnight Cowboy and Panic in Needle Park. Holender told me he rented a fifth-floor, hardwood-floor studio apartment at the corner of Columbus and 71st — at the time a “bad neighborhood” — for roughly two years in the mid ’60s. His monthly rent was $65.

(l. to r.) Celebrated cinematographer Adam Holender, Patrick Harrison and George Stevens, Jr. at Manhattan’s AMPAS theatre for a screening of Shane on 9.16.

In order for Nebraska‘s Bruce Dern to elbow his way into one of the five nominee slots for the Best Actor Oscar he’ll have to…look, I’m in no way rooting against the guy. Dern is one of the great fellows of our time. I’m just saying he’s making it hard on himself by not going for Best Supporting Actor. As far as I can see 12 Years a Slave‘s Chiwetel Ejiofor, Dallas Buyers Club‘s Matthew McConaughey and All Is Lost‘s Robert Redford (also the most likely recipient of a Gold Watch career tribute nomination) are locked and loaded. That leaves two slots and that means standing up to Wolf of Wall Street‘s Leonardo DiCaprio, American Hustle‘s Christian Bale, Captain Phillips‘ Tom Hanks and The Butler‘s Forrest Whitaker. Does anyone honestly think Dern’s got the horses to push aside three of these four guys? Man up, eat humble pie and go for supporting. The blogoscenti will stand up and cheer.

In a Monday, 9.16 article about potential Best Actress contenders, Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet has completely ignored Adele Excarchopoulos‘ world-class, aching-heart performance in Blue Is The Warmest Color. He doesn’t even mention it as a possible contender — in effect saying her performance doesn’t even rate as an outlier. Instead he kowtows to the name-branders — Blue Jasmine‘s Cate Blanchett, Philomena‘s Judi Dench, Saving Mr. Banks‘ Emma Thompson, August: Osage County‘s Meryl Streep and Gravity‘s Sandra Bullock. It’s only September, for God’s sake, and guys like Brevet are pissing on one of the greatest female performances of this century. Why? Because they don’t believe that IFC Films will step up to the plate with a full-on campaign for Exarchopoulos (i.e., ad buys, parties, special events) because without this kind of push the Academy bluehairs won’t pay attention. The corruption here is blinding. Shame on Brevet and everyone else who is dismissing Exarchopoulos for these, the most banal and least admirable of reasons. Eff the parochial taste buds and lazy-ass viewing tendencies that Brad and his ilk are anticipating.

“Your need to take Oprah down is bizarre,” Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone wrote yesterday in response to my “Oprah Facing Reality” piece. It’s not a takedown thing, I replied. I was simply noting the Grand Canyon-sized gulf between a serious award-quality performance like Lupita N’yongo‘s in 12 Years A Slave and a highly respectable performance like Oprah Winfrey‘s in The Butler. I was simply saying (with no neurotic agenda of any kind) that you can’t compare the two — they don’t exist in the same realm.

“Both women give great performances,” Stone wrote. Wells response: Oprah gives a very fine performance in The Butler, but Stone isn’t showing respect for the word “great.” We all need to apply exactitude and proportion in our use of the English language or it just becomes Swahili. “One [performance] happens to be in a film [that] all of the critics and festival goers like so far,” Stone explains. “But that doesn’t mean you can draw such conclusions as this early on. There will be many names bandied about all season long. And it’s really, really early.” Wells response: I’m not sure but I think what Sasha really meant to say was, “It’s September, for God’s sake.”

Read more

Variety‘s Justin Chang: “I take it we’re in the same boat. I haven’t seen 12 years A Slave…” Grantland‘s Mark Harris: “And neither have I. Yeah, nothing’s changed since I wrote that Grantland column a few days ago.” Chang: “We’ll both be up to speed soon.” Harris: “It’s just that I just keep saying to myself…” Chang: “That…what, that it’s only September and we all need to calm down?” Harris: “Yeah, okay, I said that but my thinking has evolved. I mean, what are the people who went to Telluride and Toronto supposed to do? Forget that they saw 12 Years A Slave? Expunge it from their memories? These are the hot times, right now…the post-festival rumpus, the runaround, fingers to the wind. We can’t stick our heads in the sand, Justin. We have to get with the program.”

Is there anyone who’s seen Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave (i.e., not Mark Harris) who doesn’t feel that Lupita Nyong’o‘s performance is searing and breathtaking and yaddah-yaddah? Is there anyone who’s seen 12 Years A Slave and The Butler who believes that Oprah Winfrey‘s very good-but-not-quite-stupendous performance in the latter even approaches the calibre of Nyongo’s, much less competes with it? I’ve been contending all along that if Winfrey wasn’t a super-mogul billionaire she wouldn’t be in the conversation in the first place, but at least now she’s up against someone who’s hit a genuine grand slam. The other contenders in this category are, in this order, Sally Hawkins in Blue Jasmine, Margo Martindale in August: Osage County, June Squibb in Nebraska, Octavia Spencer in Fruitvale Station and (maybe) Carey Mulligan in Inside Llewyn Davis. What does Mark Harris think about all this other than “it’s September, for God’s sake”?

I’m watching this Grace of Monaco teaser without headphones in a noisy Coffee Bean cafe at the corner of 14th and Ninth Ave., but I’m guessing that the balding older guy reclining in the back seat of a Rolls Royce convertible as it rolls up to a scenic spot above Monaco is Alfred Hitchcock (who is played in the film by Roger Ashton-Griffiths)? Ditto the portly guy seen in distant silhouette in the next clip? Olivier Dahan‘s drama, which is curiously not about the 1955 and ’56 courtship and marriage between Grace Kelly and Prince Rainer nor about her death in 1982, will open on 11.27 via the Weinstein Co. No way in hell will I ever accept Tim Roth as Rainer…forget it. They should have cast Tom Hanks.

This morning I saw the alleged “Final Cut” of Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (’73). But the word “final” is deceptive because it’s not the fabled 99- or 100-minute version but a 94-minute “middle” version. For marketing purposes Rialto Pictures is calling it the end-all and be-all, but in the mind of any honest archivist it’s not. It’s certainly preferable to the butchered 87-minute cut that was released in 1973 but it’s an an “almost but no cigar” restoration. Hardy has said that the 94-minute cut has his “blessing” and that’s fine, but it doesn’t appear to be the version he initially cut together. To repeat, the 94-minute “middle version” lies in the foggy netherworld between the 87-minute theatrical cut and the 99- or 100-minute long version. Archivist Steve Phillips has catalogued much of the material contained in the version I saw this morning (which the printed press materials say is 94 minutes long but you never know). Here’s Phillips’ Wicker Man home page. The middle version reminded me what a superb actor Edward Woodward was and always will be in the minds of his fans. He never failed to deliver right on the mark. The man had balls, class, conviction, diction, passion.

Manhattan life is plagued by many irritations. I hate the fact that subway car doors frequently don’t open for several seconds after the train stops at a station. (In Paris you can manually open the doors yourself with that silver latch handle thing.) But the biggest drag these days (for me anyway) are the slowpokes on the street and especially in the subways. I’m not saying they have to race around like crazy rats, but what’s wrong with walking with a purposeful stride? Very few charge around like yours truly, it seems, and the ones that are really slow and obstructionist and are always blocking the sidewalks in groups of five or six or more…I was going to say it’s the tourists but I’m starting to think it’s almost everyone these days except for X-factor types. For me walking around Manhattan is exhilarating exercise, especially if you walk with a little bounce in your step; for the vast majority it’s apparently something to be endured by reducing energy expenditure as much as possible and shuffling around like 80somethings.

Read more