In her legendary 10.21.67 review of Bonnie and Clyde, Pauline Kael asked, “How do you make a good movie in this country without being jumped on?” Of course, just because a film gets jumped on doesn’t mean it’s good. But when the writer of Zero Dark Thirty is being investigated by the Senate Intelligence Committee…well, that’s definitely being jumped on. The fact that he wrote a great film is just icing on the cake.

Two days ago on AMC’s “This Week,” ZD30 screenwriter and producer Mark Boal told Martha Raddatz that the current Senate inquiry into the Oscar-nominated movie could discourage the making of similar films in the future. “I think that it could discourage other screenwriters or…writers of any kind from making topical movies, it could discourage studios from releasing them,” Boal said.

“Criticism is fine, and we, I can take criticism onboard…but there is a difference between criticism and investigation. And I think that crosses a line that hasn’t been crossed really since the ’40s, when you talk about government investigating movies.”

News of the decision to investigate Boal and Zero Dark Thirty broke about three weeks ago, and the fact that there hasn’t been any kind of rhetorical pushback from Hollywood creatives strikes me as curious if not…cowardly?

Senate Intelligence Committee to Hollywood: “We don’t like how one of your own gathered what we regard as questionable information and we intend to give him some shit about it. One result is that henceforth it’ll be a little more difficult for the next screenwriter to write a movie about some touchy issue…a movie that’ll require talking to high government sources as well as protecting them from disclosure when the heat is on. How do you guys feel about that?” Hollywood to Senate Intelligence Committee: “Uhm…sure, whatever! If you guys want to drag Mark Boal before your committee, fine! Just don’t, you know…don’t do this to any of us down the road.”

Boal dug into the ZD30 material with the use of first-hand sources, working and kvetching and sweating for four-plus years and refining and re-writing all through principal photography. He created a riveting procedural that was at once thorough and truthful and complex, and was a superb character study. [Read his “Written By” article, published in the Nov.-Dec. issue.] And anyone who’s been reading the particulars knows by now that the “ZD30 endorses torture” rap is reprehensible bullshit and that the Stalinists who pushed this line should be ashamed of themselves.

Has the film industry sent a clear and decisive message to Dianne Feinstein and John McCain‘s Senate Intelligence Committee that “we as a community stand by our own” and “take your inquiry and shove it”? No. But it should.

The issue of leaks of classified data is bullshit anyway. In their letter Senators Feinstein, McCain and Levin said the film was wrong. So if that’s true how can it also be classified?
Zero Dark Thirty has been out for well over a month, and has been investigated for over a year. And yet so far nobody — not one person — has identified a single national security leak in the movie. If they had one, wouldn’t you think they’d announce it to the world?

Remember also that these U.S. Senators asked SONY to change the film because it contradicts their beliefs about history.

At the very, very least the industry now has a second reason to give Boal the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, the first being that ZD30 is a brave and brilliant piece of work on its own.

There’s another line from Kael’s Bonnie and Clyde review that applies. Nothing how Arthur Penn and Warren Beatty‘s film had been attacked by pedestrian-minded critics because “it goes too far” and has “divided audiences”, Kael wrote the following: “Though we may dismiss the attacks with ‘What good movie doesn’t give offense?’, the fact is that it is generally only good movies that provoke attacks.”

An Atlanticwire.com piece called “Why Zero Dark Thirty Crashed Just Outside The Compound” promises a gripping blow-by-blow account about how and why the Oscar potential of Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s brilliant hunt-for-Osama-bin-laden film was snuffed out by Washington power-wielders and Hollywood’s Stalinist cabal. Except it doesn’t do that. It just kind of riffs around and offers impressions and loose recall.

Nor does it get into Sony publicity’s standing by silently when the heat was on during the Xmas holidays, and how Sony didn’t, in my view, respond soon or forcefully enough once 2013 began.

But we all watched the takedown happen, and we all have our ideas why leftie essayists worked so hard to bring hurt. ZD30 opted for honest adult ambiguity instead of blunt moral condemnation in its depiction of the torture applied during the Bush years. For the sin of failing to condemn enhanced interrogation with ethical fire and brimstone, the left got out the whip and lashed Biggy-Boal until everyone had gotten the message.

What mainly bugs me about the piece is that author Richard Lawson gets it wrong right off the top when he writes that “earlier this month” — i.e., January — “the conventional wisdom was that Kathryn Bigelow’s hunt-for-Osama bin Laden film was the one to beat.” Nope — not in my realm. It seemed to me that Zero Dark Thirty was bloodied and on the ropes by Christmas Day, and all but dead as a potential Best Picture winner sometime between the first and second week of January.

It began to get beaten up over the torture thing starting in early December. One of the first counter-arguments came from Tom Carson in a 12.11 prospect.org piece called “Zero Dark Thirty‘s Morality Brigade.” I realized things were getting heavy around the time of Andrew O’Hehir‘s favorable Salon review (12.13), which raised the torture issue without condemning the film in the slightest. (O’Hehir actually called it “something close to a masterpiece.”) But then came that damning letter sent by Senators Dianne Feinstein, John McCain and Mark Frenden, which was reported on 12.19. And then Alex Gibney’s 12.21 Huffington Post slam piece (calling the film “fundamentally reckless when it comes to the subject of torture”) fanned the flames.

Mark Bowden‘s 1.2.13 Atlantic article took issue with the haters and presented a thoughtful pro-ZD30 case, but were people even listening at that point? Naomi Wolf‘s Guardian piece comparing Kathryn Bigelow to Leni Reifnstahl was posted on 1.4. By the time David Clennon, Martin Sheen and Ed Asner expressed opposition to the film on or about 1.12, the game was pretty much over.

Indeed, I voiced concerns about what was happening in a 12.24 HE piece called “ZD30 Needs Strong Last-Ditch Defense,” to wit:

“It makes me sick to my stomach to think that a film as masterful as ZD30 can be taken down by a vitriolic ideological mob, but as Samuel Goldwyn might have said if he were here right now, ‘If people want to smear a film, you can’t stop them.’ Except you can stop them, or Sony can, I mean. They can at least try. They might lose, but where is the honor is letting this teardown happen without standing up and explaining in detail how the accusers are dead wrong or wildly off on their own beam?”

From Lawson’s account: “[By early December] Zero Dark was considerably ahead in the awards tally, taking top prizes from the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle, among others. The film was perhaps even better reviewed than Argo, and had the added benefit of being a truly serious film about contemporary geopolitics. Argo is similarly about the Middle East and full of shaky-cam intrigue, but it’s a decidedly lighter film, with long comedy sequences and genial performances by cozily likable actors. It’s serious, but Zero Dark Thirty is more intense, newsier, and undeniably grim. It’s grownup and respectable, in other words. Where Argo is entertainment, Zero Dark is enrichment.

“This dark gravitas elevated ZD30 above other Oscar competitors too, from the way less hokey than it could have been but still kinda hokey Lincoln to the cute but ultimately rather small and slight Silver Linings Playbook. Zero Dark‘s lead actress Jessica Chastain seemed destined for Oscar glory herself, winning more awards than her main competitor, Silver Linings‘ Jennifer Lawrence, and generally being viewed as the deserving heir apparent to an older generation of stately talent — your Streeps, your Langes, your Benings. Just a few weeks ago, Zero Dark Thirty had all that going for it!

“But then Argo won a Golden Globe and the SAG (and the Producers Guild award), and, adding insult to injury, Lawrence snatched the prize from Chastain on both occasions. What’s going on? Well, the truth is, it has probably been over for Zero Dark for a while now.”

Late this morning Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone and I discussed Argo‘s PGA and SAG wins and the seemingly inevitable romp that will follow. It was mainly me interviewing Sasha because she’s more knowledgable (i.e., obsessed with) the stats and the histories and so on. But I got a few licks in.

When Lincoln‘s Tommy Lee Jones was announced last night as the recipient of SAG’s Best Supporting Actor award, my first thought was “is this a compensation gesture about SAG voters expressing admiration for Lincoln‘s parts rather than its whole? Because they knew it can’t and won’t win Best Ensemble, which is SAG’s version of Best Picture?”

I also asked myself “what happened to embracing Robert De Niro for being attuned and back in a galloping mode and on the emotional stick in Silver Linings Playbook when he nailed that bedside scene with Bradley Cooper?”

The other three acting races have been locked for some time now and hold no suspense —
Lincoln‘s Daniel Day Lewis for Best Actor, SLP‘s Jennifer Lawrence for Best Actress and Les Miserables‘ Anne Hathaway for Best Supporting Actress.

If I was approaching this marquee with a friend who doesn’t know much about movies and he asked what’s good, I’d urge him to see Mama, of course. But beyond that forget it. Films of this calibre are what January tends to be. No avoiding it, nothing to get excited or depressed about. Just focus on non-fiction books, TV, Blurays and DVDs of classics and/or well-reviewed films you didn’t get around to seeing in ’12.

Argo just won the SAG Ensemble Award instead of Silver Linings Playbook, and I think that settles it, don’t you? Argo wins the Best Picture Oscar. Done, settled, finito, sealed. And Lincoln is…how did a journalist I spoke to put it last night? “I know the Academy,” this person said. “They vote for what they like, and not what a guild goes for”…or words to that effect. There’s a limit to ignoring the signs.

Michael Cieply‘s 1.28 N.Y. Times piece about Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis, based on a recent interview with Joel, states the following:

Oscar Isaac in Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis.

(a) The film will privately screen next week in Los Angeles for “some music industry insiders and perhaps a few potential buyers.” Hey, Joel or Scott Rudin, what about a friendly columnist or two attending?

(b) Inside Llewyn Davis will probably screen in Cannes, with or without a U.S. distributor.

(c) “There isn’t quite as much plot as is usual for the brothers,” but then you knew that if you read my 3.9.12 screenplay review. An excerpt: “The Coen’s script, typically sharp and well-honed with tasty characters and tart, tough dialogue, is about lethargy, really. And taking care of a friend’s cat. And seeing to an abortion and trying to get paid and figure out your next move and…whatever else, man. It’s about a guy who isn’t even close to getting his act together, who just shuffles around from one couch to the next, grasping at straws, doing a session recording one day and trying to land a performing gig the next, like a rolling stone, no direction home.”

(d) “For the record Llewyn Davis doesn’t really resemble, or sound like, Dave Van Ronk, whose posthumous 2005 memoir, ‘The Mayor of Macdougal Street,’ written with Elijah Wald, served as source material for the film.” But you also knew that, etc. An excerpt: “I can tell you that the character of Llewyn Davis bears no resemblance whatsover to the Dave Van Ronk I’ve read about over the years. He was always a relatively minor, small-time figure in terms of fame and record sales, but he was heavily committed to folk music, to the West Village musician community, to his troubadour way of life and certainly to everything that was starting to happen in the early ’60s. If nothing else a man who lived large. Llewyn Davis as created by the Coen bros. (and played by the relatively small-statured and Latin-looking Oscar Isaac) is a guy who lives and thinks small, and who’s no match for Van Ronk spiritually either. He’s glum, morose — a kick-around guy trying to make it as a folk musician but not much of a go-getter. He’s vaguely pissed-off, resentful, a bit dull. He can sing and play guitar and isn’t untalented, but he has no fire in the belly. And any way you want to slice it Llewyn Davis is not Van Ronk. Or at least, not in any way I was able to detect.”

Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake in Inside Llewyn Davis.

(e) Inside Llewyn Davis “promises to be quintessential Coen brothers fare — but different,”

(f) “It has a certain kinship with Les Miserables” with almost all the principal actors — Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake — singing and “lots of duets and trios.”

Possibly significant question: Cieply doesn’t mention whether the film is presented in black-and-white or not (the stills illustrating the piece obviously suggest this), but a monochrome Davis would be delicious. For guys like myself, I mean.

Three and a half months have passed since Criterion announced its decision to issue its On The Waterfront Bluray (streeting on 2.19, or about three weeks hence) in three separate aspect ratios — 1.33, 1.66 and 1.85. And I’m still trying to understand how this doesn’t undermine if not discredit Bob Furmanek‘s advocacy of 1.85 as a general cropping standard for Blurays and DVDs of all non-Scope films shot from April 1953 on.

There’s no disputing that non-Scope films began to be projected in U.S. theatres starting in mid to late ’53 and that this standard gathered momentum and was pretty much the across-the-board deal by the end of that year, or certainly by early ’54. Nor is anyone disputing that Elia Kazan‘s On The Waterfront, released in July 1954, was shot by Kazan with the understanding that it would be projected at 1.85. I’ve looked at the 1.85 version on iTunes and while I don’t find it comforting or pleasing, it’s very nicely framed. Kazan was no bum. He knew what he was doing.

Why, then, did Criterion chiefs decide to ignore Furmanek’s research and issue three different versions of Waterfront? Uhm, gee….I don’t know. Because the film breathes much better at 1.33 or 1.66? Because they see merit in my argument about headroom being a really nice and desirable thing? Because they decided that distributors and exhibitors wanting theatrical films to be presented at 1.85 from mid-1953 on so they would look wider than TV screens shouldn’t be the end-all and be-all of watching films on Bluray in the 21st Century?

In my book the Furmanek 1.85 theology went out the window when Criterion decided on this triple-aspect-ratio approach. Criterion is by far the most purist, dweeby, grain-monky home-video outfit in the United States, and if these guys decide that 1.85 isn’t the King Shit of aspect ratios for a classic 1954 film…well, that means something. It means “all bets are off” if a company renowned for cinematically pure standards is willing to accomodate the headroom values that I’ve been espousing for years. It means that the game is basically over for the 1.85 fascists.

From here on the shape of every 1950s and ’60s film being mastered for Bluray is negotiable. If Criterion can play it loose and tap-dancey with the aspect ratio of On The Waterfront, any aspect ratio on any non-Scope film can be fiddled with.

Here’s how I explained it last October in a piece called “Glorious Furmanek Setback“: “Directors and dps of the mid ’50s used and composed 1.85 framings starting in 1953 because they were ordered to and not because they wanted to. I also find it hard to believe that anyone with any sense of aesthetic balance and serenity would have freely chosen 1.85 framing a when the much more elegant 1.33 or 1.66 framings were an option. And so I’ve always felt a profound resentment toward absolutist 1.85 advocates when it comes to evaluating the proper proportion of films of this era.

“I genuinely feel there is something cramped and perverse in the aesthetic eye of anyone who would consider these options and say, ‘It is better to squeeze the action down into this severely cropped-off aspect ratio…it is better to have the action in this or that film confined within a lowered-ceiling aesthetic straight out of Orson Bean‘s cramped office floor in Being John Malkovich.’

“And it is also my belief — my allowance — that the 1950s TV box aspect ratio of 1.33 is somehow more calming than 1.66, that it agrees with and flows naturally from the framing aesthetic of Hollywood of the ‘early ’30s to mid ’50s, which was deeply ingrained at the beginning of the studio-mandated transition era that began in the spring of 1953, and that it conveys a certain naturalism, a freedom, an atmosphere of gloriously spacious headroom…aahh, why go on? You can’t explain this stuff. Either the eyes of the beholder get it or they don’t. Mine know the truth of it. The concept of removing visual information from a frame of film strikes me as wicked and almost evil, in a way.”

“It is different today, of course. Our aesthetic eye, our sense of visual rhyme and harmony adapted decades ago to seeing movies in 1.85, and it’s as natural as breathing now…but not then. NOT then. At the very, very least, if the research-fortified, Movie God-defiant Forces of Furmanek insist on 1.85 framings for Blurays of films from this era, they should at least follow the example of the Masters of Cinema Touch of Evil and now — hark the herald angels sing! — the upcoming Criterion Bluray of On The Waterfront and offer dual or triple aspect ratios.”

I own Criterion’s Sunday Bloody Sunday Bluray, and have watched it at least twice since getting my copy two or three months ago. And up until yesterday I never knew that Daniel Day Lewis is the tallish, dark-haired kid scratching cars. Lewis was born in April 1957, so he was 13 when the film was shot in late ’70. He’s not even recognizable. I was inspired to check this after Scott Feinberg asked DDL about this last night.

Daniel Day Lewis, the presumed winner of the 2012 Best Actor Oscar for his Lincoln performance, sat down last night in Santa Barbara for a fairly solemn and somewhat revealing interview with Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg. There was nothing playful, irreverent or spur-of-the-moment going on between them. It was strictly a “here’s a serious question” and “here’s my serious answer” type of discussion, and that was fine. I was into it. I felt on some level like I was studying for a final exam, and that it was important to listen carefully.

Daniel Day Lewis during last night’s conversation with Scott Feinberg at Santa Barbara’s Arlington theatre — Saturday, 1.26, 9:10 pm.

I found their talk absorbing because Lewis, it seemed, was being, in his mercurial way, as open and confessional as his personality allowed. He was “playing the game” as frankly as he knew how, and I respected that.

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Before Ben Affleck‘s Argo won the Producers’ Guild Darryl F. Zanuck award last night, the blogger/columnist view was “the PGA winner won’t be a lock to win the Best Picture Oscar — we all remember Little Miss Sunshine — but a PGA triumph definitely ups the odds and makes an Oscar win very likely.”

After the Argo win (which happened as I was watching the Daniel Day Lewis tribute at Santa Barbara’s Arlington theatre, or a little after 10 pm), the blogger/columnist rumble became “well, uhm…it appears that Lincoln has some stiff competition! Could it be that the our very own, historically-fortified, Spielberg-default, Guru-endorsed Lincoln might actually lose? Well, one thing’s for sure…we have a horse race!”

Lincoln has won no significant Best Picture honors, Argo has won three (PGA, BFCA and Golden Globes), and Silver Linings Playbook is favored to win the Best Ensemble SAG Award at the Shrine Auditorium tonight…and certain blogger/columnists are concluding that Argo might win “but who knows…we have our doubts…the Academy is not the PGA…it has its own way of thinking…could Lincoln snag a win regardless? It’s possible!” (Last night in Santa Barbara a respected columnist conveyed this view in so many words.)

Take the needle out of your arm and listen to the sound of Oscar pollen blowing in the wind. As a Best Picture contender, Lincoln is dead, dead, deader than dead.

Argo is a soft contender, agreed. It doesn’t have anyone’s idea of a strong subtext or thematic undertow. Every since Telluride I’ve been calling it a very well-made caper film — a “secret CIA operation to put one over on the Islamic radicals” movie that is well written, very nicely acted and smoothly assured, that offers a few knowing cracks about film-industry phonies and delivers a satisfying finale in which the baddies are foiled…curses!

So yes, Argo‘s support is not as impassioned as it could be, but the support for Lincoln is even less impassioned. That’s obvious.

The Best Picture contender with the most ardent support is Silver Linings Playbook, or so it’s been observed, but the SLP Hate Brigade has colored the conversation on that film and the longstanding prejudice against Best Picture-ing a comedy or a romcom (despite the fact that SLP is more accurately described as a spirited meds-and-mental-illness dramedy) is as alive as ever.

In my humble view the other “secret CIA plot to put one over on the Islamic radicals and make them angry” film — Zero Dark Thirty — is a sturdier, more impressive achievement. It’s less “commercial,” more finely woven, a stronger dose and obviously more realistic. Compare Argo‘s pure-Hollywood finale at Tehran airport with the cars driving alongside the jet to ZD30‘s Seal attack on the Bin Laden compound in Abottobad. No contest. Three or four months from now Argo will be a Netflix favorite; Zero Dark Thirty will one day be a Criterion Bluray.

But the lazy brains have bought into the leftie-Stalinist bullshit that Kathryn Bigelow‘s film endorses torture, and that’s where the conversation has pretty much stopped.

In my heart of hearts and dream of dreams, Silver Linings Playbook — my emotional favorite of 2012 — pulls out a surprise win. But that’s a dream. Argo will win. It’s pretty much over.

Fair assessment: “Ben Affleck‘s Argo has sealed its comeback from Oscar-nomination disappointment to become the clear frontrunner in the Best Picture race. This year’s best-picture race has been wide open…but wins at the Golden Globes and the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards gave Affleck’s CIA-meets-Hollywood thriller a boost, and the PGA win now edges it past Lincoln and suggests that Argo could well become only the third film to win the top Oscar without a Best Director nomination.” — Steve Pond at TheWrap.

Denial quote #1: “[The PGA win] was the latest triumph for Argo, which won the Golden Globes motion picture-drama earlier in the month. With the win, the film establishes itself firmly as a solid contender for the Best Picture Oscar after earlier being thought out of the running when Ben Affleck was snubbed for best director by the motion picture academy.” — Chris Lee, Julie Makinen, L.A. Times.

“Tentative” Semi-Denial Quote: “It’s starting to get serious. [The PGA] is the first guild to weigh in so we have a tentative frontrunner in Argo now for the Academy Awards’ Best Picture.” — Deadline‘s Pete Hammond.

Even-keeled assessment by Variety‘s Dave McNary: “The PGA winner has matched the Oscar Best Picture winner in the last five years with The Artist, The King’s Speech, The Hurt Locker, Slumdog Millionaire and No Country for Old Men. The PGA and AMPAS last diverged in 2006 when the Zanuck award went to Little Miss Sunshine and The Departed won the Oscar.

“The PGA uses the preferential balloting system employed for the Academy Awards and the PGA winner has matched the Oscar Best Picture in 16 of 23 years. There are 494 producers in the producers branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — about 8 percent of the AMPAS membership. “

I saw relatively few of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival award winners announced thus far: I missed Fruitvale (Grand Jury + Audience Award for Best Dramatic feature), saw Inequality For All (winner of Special Jury Prize, U.S. Documentary) and totally missed the following: Blood Brother (US Doc Audience Award), Metro Manila (Audience Award for Best World Narrative), The Square (World Doc Audience Award), This is Martin Bonner (Best of Next), A River Changes Course (World Doc Grand Jury Prize), Pussy Riot: A Pink Prayer (World Cinema, Special Jury Prize, Documentary)…to hell with this. I saw everything I thought I should have seen, and I missed out on a few and that’s that.