I felt mezzo-mezzo about Eric Rochand‘s Mobius, which played a few days ago at the Tribeca Film Festival as well as L.A.’s COLCOA fest. Set largely in gauche Monaco, it’s partly a financial espionage drama and partly…actually mostly a romantic relationship drama between Jean Dujardin and Cecile de France as a non-governmental Russian spook and a French-English financial trader. The two twains don’t really blend or cross-pollinate, but Mobius is not a boring or listless film — it’s reasonably engrossing.

The obvious template is Alfred Hitchcock‘s Notorious, but what happens between the lovers isn’t about “love” as much as intense chemistry and gratifying orgasms and comforting hugs.

I’ll give it this much — it ends with one of those nice hugs, and in a way that feels more or less satisfying. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a spy drama that lets the plot stuff go at the end and just zeroes in on the heart. So it’s different, at least.

But the first sex scene is very…odd. They go back to his hotel room and they do it gently and slowly — Rochand mainly stays on facial closeups although he offers a shot or two of De France’s lower anatomy — and she comes, twice. But I was in my seat going “what is this?…we’re just going to sit here and watch two attractive, well-lighted people fuck? I mean, I guess it’s okay but why?”

I was having this reaction because the movie just stops during this scene. It brings nothing significant to the table. And it’s not really necessary as the thing that really matters in Mobius, as noted, is the warm embrace of a man with strong arms. So watching Cecile de France quietly gasp and moan is kind of a “what?” moment.

Sex scenes were fairly common in the late ’60s and ’70s but those days are long gone. The ones that go one for more than 15 or 20 or 30 seconds (i.e., with the lovers in more or less the same location and sexual position) always stop things cold. You have to cut, cut, cut and make it all seem brief. You obviously have to imply more than show. You can do the steamy sweaty thing but you have to do it…I was going to say like Adrian Lyne but that’s an old reference. It’s nonetheless a good idea to always use all kinds of hot angles and humor and snazzy back-lighting and whatnot and get it over with sooner rather than later. You sure as hell don’t want to dwell on sex scenes, that’s for sure.

For whatever reason I can’t copy the embed code on this audio file of Steven Soderbergh‘s “State of Cinema” talk last Saturday at the San Francisco Film Festival. So just go to Anne Thompson‘s Indiewire column and give it a listen. Update: Has Thompson’s mp3 been taken down? If so, whoever’s responsible is a dick. And those who insisted on no recordings of any kind last Saturday are dicks also.

Update: Deadline has posted a transcript: http://m.deadline.com/2013/04/steven-soderbergh-state-of-cinema-address/

I’m going to read William Faulkner‘s As I Lay Dying on my 5.3 NYC-to-Berlin flight as preparation for James Franco‘s filmed adaptation, which will play in the Un Certain Regard section. The story is about an ailing family matriarch, Addie Bundren (Beth Grant), on her way out and efforts by her sons and others to honor her request to be buried in the nearby town of Jefferson, Mississippi. Franco has cast Danny McBride in a supporting role, which strikes me as curious given that McBride is renowned for playing brute, snorting, slovenly beasts in comedies. Jim Parrack (True Blood) plays Cash, Addie’s oldest son, and Franco plays Darl, the second oldest. Logan Marshall-Green, Ahna O’Reilly and Tim Blake Nelson also costar.

Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg has posted five suggestions for the Academy to consider when they have their “unprecedented, all-members meeting” on Saturday, May 4th. The one I agree with the most is about reducing deadwood and expanding the membership:

“(3) Address the demographics of the membership. The Academy should address widespread and not unmerited concern about the diversity of its membership, or lack thereof: a recent LA Times study revealed it is 94% white, 77% male and 86% over the age of 50). This has a lot to do with why more conservative films triumph over more daring films (Crash d. Brokeback Mountain, The King’s Speech d. The Social Network, etc.), some films of questionable merit get nominated at all (schmaltz like The Blind Side and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), and some eminently worthy films do not (The Dark Knight, Blue Valentine, etc.).

“There are only two realistic ways for the Academy to fix this anytime soon. It could purge from its rolls members who have long been inactive or retired, the strategy employed by former Academy president Gregory Peck in the 1960s. Or, to avoid hurting those members’ feelings but still dilute their influence, while also endearing itself to younger and active people in the industry, the Academy could markedly expand its membership, which now numbers around 6,000. This would not be unprecedented. Membership swelled to around 12,000 from 1938 to 1945 when the members of the Screen Extras Guild were invited to join and had full voting privileges.”

In a 4.4.13 HE piece called “Reduce Deadwood Influence,” I suggested a scaled voting system that would give more weight to votes from Academy members who’ve contributed to a film within the last five years than to those who’ve more or less been out of the game a decade or two or longer.

“If the Academy wants to be part of the world as it is right now and have the Oscar winners reflect this, it has to reduce the influence of people whose professional peaks happened 15 or 20 or 25 or more years ago. These people will retain membership and all the priveleges that go with that, but their votes won’t count as much as those who are actively working and contributing to the films of today. Simple.

“Every year Academy members will be asked online ‘how recently have you worked on a feature film destined for theatrical or a film or series destined for cable or streaming?’ If the last film you worked on was released ten or more years ago, you get a single vote and become a C-grade voter. If the last film you have worked on was released between five and ten years ago, you get two votes and become a B-grade voter. And if you’ve worked on a film made and released within the last five years, you get three votes and becomes an A-grade voter.

“How would this system be unfair? What could possibly be the downside? If this system had been in place seven years ago, Brokeback Mountain would have won the Best Picture Oscar.”

Pro Video Coalition‘s Eric Escobar has posted a summary of yesterday’s “state of cinema” speech by Steven Soderbergh, delivered at the Kabuki Cinemas under the aegis of the San Francisco Int’l Film Festival. Reporting has apparently been scant due to Soderbergh having requested that no one record video or audio or even take pictures…Jesus.

At one point Soderbergh delivered the following observation, according to Escobar: “Executives Don’t Get Punished But Filmmakers Do: When a film bombs, it’s the fault of the filmmakers. There is no turnover in the executive offices, and the artists are just replaced with new artists and the machine learns nothing. There is no support of a filmmaker over his or her career. There is no talent development strategy so that a filmmaker grows by trying ideas, making mistakes and triumphs, learning from the experiences and becoming a better filmmaker. It is opening weekend numbers and end-product profits perspective.”

And this, said Soderbergh, is killing the occasional healthy push-through of arty or innovative or otherwise interesting cinema in the movie business.

No shit?

Escobar also reports that Soderbergh “concluded that if you’re a studio then the set-up is working fine. Then he pontificated that if he were given a half a billion dollars he’d gather up all the really good indie filmmakers he knew (including Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth and Barry Jenkins) and set them loose within a timeframe and budget total and say go for it, make me three films, spend the money as you see fit. But no one has given him a half a billion dollars.”

Honestly — if you had a half a billion dollars to throw into movies and you were looking for at least some kind of modest return so you could keep re-investing and making more films, would you give it to Soderbergh so he could pass it along to Seimetz, Carruth and Jenkins? Soderbergh has made three things clear over the last 20 years: (a) he’s a brilliant filmmaker, (b) outside of the Ocean’s films and Out of Sight and Magic Mike he does’t make movies for the popcorn-munching masses and (c) he relates mostly to emotionally cool and reserved material — his films don’t exactly deliver great rivers of emotion.

Was anyone dumb enough to pay to see Big Wedding this weekend? I wouldn’t watch it with a knife at my back. Any film with a 10% or lower Rotten Tomatoes rating deserves special mention, but the stink was spreading on this one weeks ago. Is Robert DeNiro back to being the once-phenomenal-but-now-diminished actor who will take any paycheck role that comes along, or is he still coasting on that Silver Linings Playbook good will? The latter, right? Give him a pass. But if he keeps this shit up, it’s back to the doghouse.

So Reese Witherspoon‘s cowardly decision to bail on talk-show appearances earlier this week to promote Mud didn’t hurt the film’s commercial performance. Jeff Nichols‘ well-reviewed rural drama earned $2.1 million on 363 screens, which translates as a $6022 average. Surely a smattering of HE readers have seen it by now. Have critics been over-praising (98% Rotten Tomatoes) or are they on the money? Reactions, please.

Mouse is perfectly fine. Last Friday the Laurel Pet Hospital staff shaved him, removed the abcess, stitched him up, etc. Antibiotic administered. Four liquid painkillers swallowed. That’s a little drainage tube that’s coming out Monday or Tuesday. Right as rain.

This clip should be used for a re-edit of Charles Ferguson‘s Oscar-winning Inside Job (’10). Everyone in that film is so brilliant and urbane and measured in their analyses. This Irish guy just spits it out plain and true. Thanks to Moving Picture Blog‘s Joe Leydon for passing it along.

Leydon comments: “This was sent to me by a former shipmate of my late father, Michael Leydon. This guy sure as hell sounds like him. I visited [my dad] in Liverpool (where he spent his retirement years with my stepmom) during the infamous miners’ strike. Wish I had a dollar for every time he referred to Margaret Thatcher as ‘that fookin’ bitch.'”

Of course I’m posting this 12 hours later than everyone else did last night. What do you expect? This is Hollywood Elsewhere. I have to kick things around and let them settle down to the bedrock before I pass them along. Best line: “Really? Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?” Best staged bit: Daniel Day Lewis starring in Steven Spielberg‘s Obama.