Orlando Sentinel critic Roger Moore, a “name” and a good, clever fellow, has been shown the door. Another vital, widely-read critic gone with the wind. I know because a publicist friend told me that Moore emailed a colleague today confirming he’s been shitcanned. Hugs, chin-ups, condolences.
Four significant, critically hailed 2011 documentaries — Errol Morris‘s Tabloid, Werner Herzog‘s Into The Abyss, Andrew Rossi‘s Page One: Inside The N.Y. Times and Asif Kapadia‘s Senna — didn’t make the Academy’s shortlist, per today’s announcement. 124 docs had originally qualified, and 15 made the final cut.
A half-hour ago a publicist pal and I discussed why this or that film doesn’t make the cut, and he agreed with my observation that the doc committee often ignores docs made by big-name directors like Morris or Herzog. The committee presumes that the big-name docs “are getting or going to get a lot of attention or box-office anyway so what do they need us for?,” the publicist said.
Poor John Sloss must be really pissed heartbroken about Senna, which he’s been pushing hard for many months.
The 15 shortlisted docs, in alphabetical order:
Battle for Brooklyn (RUMER Inc.); Bill Cunningham New York (First Thought Films); Buck? (Cedar Creek Productions); Hell and Back Again (Roast Beef Productions Limited); If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (Marshall Curry Productions, LLC); Jane’s Journey (NEOS Film GmbH & Co. KG); The Loving Story (Augusta Films); Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (@radical.media); Pina (Neue Road Movies GmbH); Project Nim (a.k.a. “the monkey movie” — Red Box Films); Semper Fi: Always Faithful (Tied to the Tracks Films, Inc.); Sing Your Song (S2BN Belafonte Productions, LLC); Undefeated (Spitfire Pictures); Under Fire: Journalists in Combat (JUF Pictures, Inc.); We Were Here (Weissman Projects, LLC)
Doc committee apparatchiks will eventually select the five nominees from among the 15 titles on the shortlist.
Generic: The 84th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Tuesday, 1.24.12, at 5:30 a.m. Pacific in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2011 will be presented on Sunday, 2.26.12, at the Kodak Theatre.
A New York-based critic friend just wrote me the following: “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Sony can’t screen The Girl With Dragon Tattoo until 11.28, and so New York Film Critics Circle chief John Anderson has moved the voting date to 11.29,” or one day later than previously announced. Anderson informed the NYFCC membership yesterday by email, my source says. Anderson decided not to directly confirm (or deny) the change when I wrote him this morning.
Dennis Davern, former captain of the Splendour, the yacht co-owned by Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood, repeatedly refused this morning on the Today show to spit out any hard specifics surrounding the November 1981 drowning death of Wood as he knows or recalls them. But the cowardly Davern did gradually and oh-so-vaguely finger Wagner as having been responsible for her death, particularly in his reluctance to try and find Wood after she’d disappeared in the wake of a huge fight.
Madman though he was, Klaus Kinski showed true genius while delivering his legendary “I am the only free man on this train” line from Dr. Zhivago. The way he rattles the chain and pounds his chest for emphasis, and the seething anger in his voice as he says “the rest of you are cattle!” If you ask me this ranks alongside the Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin as a choice filet of Russian suffering.
Let it also never be forgotten that in the late ’80s Kinski authored one of the most honest and amazingly blunt autobiographies ever written by an actor — lewd, scalding, pornographic and 100% confessional with zero regard for any egoistic image-buffing. “When Random House, fearing legal problems, withdrew publication in 1989 of an earlier version of this book, All I Need Is Love, Kinski’s memoir became an underground classic.” — Publisher’s Weekly.
Last night the Academy hosted a 40th anniversary screening of Peter Bogdanovich‘s The Last Picture Show (digitally restored, “definitive director’s cut”). The black-and-white classic actually opened on 10.22.71. The Texas-born Luke Wilson served as host of the event. The post-screening q & a include Bogdanovich and costars Timothy Bottoms, Cybill Shepherd, Cloris Leachman and Eileen Brennan.
I’m not sure what The Last Picture Show would’ve finally been or amounted to without the “old times” swimming-hole scene with Ben Johnson. It won Johnson his Best Supporting Actor Oscar, that’s for sure.
“Almost every year in the Best Actress Oscar race, amid all the flashy biopics and box-office heavies, there seems to be one indie performance from across the pond that gets short shrift. Last year, it was Lesley Manville‘s hysterical turn in Mike Leigh‘s Another Year. Before that, Sally Hawkins‘ brilliant turn as the terribly cheery Poppy in another Leigh film, Happy-Go-Lucky, went criminally overlooked by the academy.
Tyrannosaur star Olivia Colman.
“And now, going up against Meryl Streep‘s Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, Michelle Williams‘ Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn, and The Help‘s Viola Davis, there’s Olivia Colman‘s quietly devastating performance in Tyrannosaur.” — from Marlow Stern‘s 11.17 Daily Beast profile of Colman.
During a recently-posted Hollywood Reporter directors panel video, Matthew Belloni or Stephen Galloway (not sure which) got bitch-slapped by The Descendants director Alexander Payne, Shame helmer Steve McQueen and Young Adult director Jason Reitman for saying that Ryan O’Neal is “horrendously miscast” in Barry Lyndon.
Payne: “We disagree there. I think he’s perfectly cast.” McQueen: “I disagree completely. Ryan O’Neal — he’s brilliant, he’s Barry Lyndon, he’s beautiful, he’s lyrical. You project yourself onto him, you are Barry Lyndon.” Reitman: “The fact that he doesn’t know what he’s doing makes it actually work. His naivete adds to the role.”
What new evidence in the drowning death of Natalie Wood — an event that happened almost exactly 30 years ago — could prompt the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department to reopen the case? What new fact or assertion could have possibly persuaded them to start a new investigation? That’s kind of a weird thing to do, no? What could possibly come of this? Will a finger be pointed at someone for doing (or failing to do) something that led to Wood’s death?
Update: This TMZ report seems to explain a lot of it. This Lana Wood interview also.
The tragedy happened on 11.28.81. Wood, her husband Robert Wagner and Brainstorm costar Chris Walken were aboard Wagner-Wood’s yacht, Splendour, which was anchored in Isthmus Cove off Catalina Island. Also on board was the boat’s skipper, Dennis Davern, who had worked for the Wagner-Wood for many years.
From Wood’s Wiki page: “Wood either tried to leave the yacht or to secure a dinghy from banging against the hull when she accidentally slipped and fell overboard. When her body was found, she was wearing a down jacket, nightgown, and socks. A woman on a nearby yacht said she heard calls for help at around midnight. The cries lasted for about 15 minutes and were answered by someone else who said, ‘Take it easy. We’ll be over to get you.’ It was laid back. There was no urgency or immediacy in their shouts.”
“Others have speculated that a lover’s quarrel between Wood and Wagner that had to do with Walken took place before the accident.”
Walken and Wood, costars in Douglas Trumbull‘s Brainstorm, were allegedly having an affair or had recently had an affair. That, at least, is what I heard way back when from four or five gossip guys in the New York journalism world.
“For his part, Wagner has said he blames himself for the incident. ‘Did I blame myself? If I’d been there, I could have done something,’ he told the U.K.’s Daily Mail in 2009. ‘I wasn’t, but ultimately, a man is responsible for his loved one. Yes, I blamed myself. I would have done anything in the world to protect her. Anything. I lost a woman I loved with all my heart, not once but twice, and I will never completely come to terms with that.'”
Criterion’s Twelve Angry Men Bluray arrived today. I’ve never seen such rich inky blacks and delicious needlepoint detail in the fine textures of the shirts and the beard follicles and sweat beads on E.G. Marshall‘s face and the weave in Jack Warden‘s straw hat. It’s the finest-looking version of this 1957 classic I’ve ever seen. It’s like sitting in front of a movie screen, in the fourth or fifth row.
Henry Fonda in a scene from 12 Angry Men — Bluray version.
But it’s also one of the most overwhelming grainstorm experiences I’ve had in a long time. Almost every shot is blanketed with digital mosquitoes…billions upon billlions of swirling micro-gnats. It was ridiculous at first, but it got a little better when I turned the sharpness levels down from eight to two.
I realize that it’s a tradeoff — to get the deeper tones and better detail and the celluloid complexity you have to accept the mosquitoes because they’re part of the image, but man…I wanted to get out the bug spray and slap on the insect repellent.
The same scene on the 2007 DVD.
Six or seven hours ago I learned that The Iron Lady had screened for select Hollywood bloggers. Three or four hours ago In Contention‘s Kris Tapley posted his review (Meryl Streep good-great, movie mezzo-mezzo). And then Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg posted the same opinion. And then along came Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil and Adam Waldowski with the old rama-lama-ding-dong. And then Deadline‘s Pete Hammond posted his Streep rave.
Streep, Streep, Streep, Streep, Streepah-lah-deep, deepah-lah-deep…Streep-peep-peep.
It was an honor and a delight not to be invited along with these guys. Thank you for not trusting me, Weinstein p.r. reps. I’m speechless. No, seriously…I’d very much appreciate being allowed to see The Iron Lady within the next few days. If it’s not too much trouble, I mean. Thank you.
Maybe this was punishment for writing that The Artist is a bit of a lightweight bauble, and that it doesn’t play as well the second time. Or maybe it’s a little slapdown or payback for being a King’s Speech hater last year. Except I never was a King’s Speech hater. I always said that film was all right, pretty good, not bad, nice, etc. What I hated was the idea of people saying it deserved the Best Picture Oscar more than The Social Network….that’s all.
The two existing trailers for Steve McQueen‘s Shame (i.e., the Carey Mulligan ‘New York, New York” songbird one that surfaced today plus the one that came out two or three weeks ago) are, I feel, more enticing on their own level than Shame itself. It’s always easier, of course, to make a more captivating two-minute trailer than a 95-minute feature, but still….
I only know that these trailers have a fleetingly warm, fascinating, alluring vibe, and that the film is significantly colder, frostier and clinical-analytical. Which isn’t to suggest that there’s anything wrong or ineffective with that. The film is what it is, and it certainly has integrity. But it’s not what these trailers are indicating. Hats off to Fox Searchlight marketing for creating two of the best trailers I’ve seen all year.
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