Yesterday Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone posted a list of 2013’s likeliest Best Picture contenders along with lists from Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet, In Contention‘s Kris Tapley and Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil. For what it’s worth my own list is as follows (and in this order): American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street, All Is Lost, August: Osage County, Gravity, Fruitvale Station, Saving Mr. Banks, Inside Llewyn Davis, Captain Phillips, The Monuments Men, Before Midnight, 12 Years A Slave, Foxcatcher, Parkland…what is that, 14? Maybe half of these will be nominated. Okay, eight or nine.

But we also know that one or two will be subjected to takedown campaigns for this or that reason. It’s in the nature of what Oscar campaigning has become over the last 10 or 15 years.

Read more

I’ve been invited to a special screening of JOBS at Regal Cinemas L.A. Live (1000 West Olympic Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90015) on Tuesday, 8.13, and also to an after-party. Every movie has its hoopla, and then the reviews and Twitter comments fill the air and then the public weighs in and…you know, it all evens out.

It seems as if Oliver Hirschbiegel‘s Diana (9.20 overseas, fall stateside) is a complex adult romantic drama about the last two years in the life of Diana, Princess of Wales (Naomi Watts). Hirschbiegel (Downfall) is a good director and I hear that Stephen Jeffrey‘s script is tidy, clean and well sculptured. eOne is opening it domestically in the fall (probably in October or November), but with Diana not slated for any of the fall film festivals you have to wonder why. If the UK premiere is on 9.5 and the commercial UK opening is set for 9.20, why does the UK trailer say it’s opening on October 10th?

We’re The Millers (Warner Bros,, 8.7) is a vulgar, sloppily written, oppressively unfunny road comedy about a “typical Middle-American family” involved in a Mexican drug-smuggling charade. Plot-wise, I mean. Thematically it’s a lampoon of suburban families and the hellish, self-loathing lives they presumably lead as they tow the “normal” line. There’s a scene in which Jason Sudeikis‘ character, a Denver pot dealer, is about to get a straight-arrow haircut so he’ll look like a stodgy family guy, and he goes into a longish riff about what a miserable thing it is to be Joe Schmoe with the kids and the mortgage and the temptation to put a gun in his mouth. And yet the movie is also about the nurturing effect of living this kind of life, and how even the most anti-straightlaced among us are drawn to it.

Read more

In one fell swoop, The Lone Ranger producer Jerry Bruckheimer and costars Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer have boosted the reputation of film critics everywhere by giving them credit for having a lot more power than most people think. Variety‘s Stuart Oldham is reporting that the trio is blaming critics for the failure of The Lone Ranger by trashing it early on and coming down on their $250 million western with hammers and claws.

Read more

I read Michael Fleming‘s Deadline story about Steven Spielberg bailing on American Sniper. Four of the five basic w’s of journalism — Who, What, When and Where — are answered for the most part, but the Why feels threadbare. “Spielberg couldn’t square his vision of this movie with the budget,” Fleming writes. I wonder what really happened. Hasn’t Spielberg heard about smaller budgets having an upside because they lead to creative cost-cutting?

I’ve been moaning for years about the absence of a Bluray of Martin Ritt‘s Hud (’63). James Wong Howe‘s Oscar-winning black-and-white widescreen photography cries out for a high-def mastering. You can watch a high-def Hud via Amazon HD, and I’m sure I’ll eventually figure out how to install Amazon HD on my 55″ Vizio. But there’s something about owning a Bluray that trumps access to a high-def download. I want a Hud Bluray to have and to hold. Paramount Home Video put out a DVD about 10 years ago, but I presume they’ve since licensed the rights to Warner Home Video.

Read more

In June 2011 I was sent a copy of Diablo Cody‘s Lamb of God, which eventually became the now-completed film called Paradise (out 8.9 via Direct TV, theatrically on 10.18). “That Michael Fleming logline about the main character, who’s literally named Lamb, being a Christian who turns to stripping is incorrect,” I wrote. “It is, however, a moral tale about a Christian girl among the hapless heathens. The Vegas strip but no stripping, Cheetah Club, cash gifts, a dead fiance, a skin graft, Vicodins, etc. A well-written, sometimes sassy but more often plain-spoken drama about sins, values, generosity, growth.”

Read more

Alan Spencer‘s delivery reminds me a bit of the rat-a-tat-tat dialogue in The Social Network and His Girl Friday. I understand Spencer’s affection, but I wasn’t that much of an Eastwood fan in the early days. I wasn’t even a fan of his directing until Unforgiven. Okay, I respected Play Misty For Me and Breezy and maybe Pale Rider, but I wasn’t knocked out by them. Forget the orangutan movies. But everything changed after Unforgiven. From that point on I was on my knees.

My Bluray and DVDs represent my taste and appetites, of course, but primarily they’re a kind of refuge and watering hole for the soul — emotional foxholes that I’ve sunk into many, many times and am ready to sink into again whenever the mood strikes. I look at them and I feel proud and accomplished, and I love that I don’t keep them in alphabetical order. I had nothing to do with making them, of course, but at least I’ve reached a point in my life in which I can recognize and revel in “the best.” Much like a wine connoisseur who derives profound satisfaction from owning several dozen bottles of really good stuff, etc.

Read more

On the same day that Peter Landesmann‘s Parkland opens stateside (9.20), an anti-Parkland book called “Reclaiming Parkland” will hit the stands. The author is JFK assassination-conspiracy authority, researcher and finger-pointer James DiEugenio. Parkland embraces the “Oswald did it alone” theology in Vincent Bugliosi‘s “Reclaiming History” and DiEugenio is a sworn opponent of this. The apparent result is that Parkland producers Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman plus their failed attempt to make Bugliosi’s book into a miniseries will face scrutiny in his book.

Read more

With Adam Sandler stooge-helmer Peter Segal (Tommy Boy, Anger Management, 50 First Dates, The Longest Yard) setting the tone and a flip, smart-ass script by Doug Ellin, Tim Kelleher and Rodney Rothman, Grudge Match (Warner Bros., 12.25) might be a half-tolerable comedy. Maybe. But you never know with these lowball enterprises which (let’s be honest) are aimed at Joe and Jane Popcorn from Paramus, New Jersey. You can bet that Grudge Match will be drenched in amyhdrous butter fat and covered with handfuls of salt. Alan Arkin as a trainer will be funny — you can tell that right off the top. Whose ex-wife or disapproving girlfriend will Kim Basinger play?