Shlomi Eldar‘s Precious Life has won the Best Documentary Ophir award at the 2010 Israeli Film Academy’s award ceremony in Jerusalem. The doc, about joint efforts to remedy a young Palestinian boy’s bone-marrow issue, played Telluride and Toronto (among many other festivals) and will air on HBO next year. A disc of this has been sitting on my shelf for a little more than a month…damn. I really have to watch it soon.
I have issues with Made in Dagenham (Sony Classics, 11.19) and Barney’s Version (Sony Classics, 12.17), but let’s not go there now. The point is that Rosamund Pike easily gives the most arresting performance in both, and has earned full consideration for Best Supporting Actress honors as a result. Really. The evidence is abundant that 2010 is her breakout year.
Rosamund Pike in Made in Dagenham (l.) and Barney’s Version (r.).
Pike, whose performance as Dominic Cooper‘s slightly ditzy girlfriend in Lone Scherfig‘s An Education had an undercurrent of self-deprecating wit, plays elegant, well-educated wives of character and principle in these two films.
Her role as Miriam, the infinitely gracious and grounded spouse of Paul Giamatti‘s Uriah Heep in Barney’s Version, is the larger of the two, but you could still call it supporting. She’s so true-blue in the film, so regal and refined and dependably honest, that you almost don’t believe her…and yet you do. Because Pike has a straight-shooting, no-time-for-bullshit quality about her, and this makes Miriam into something a bit more, I’m guessing, than what was probably on the page. Or maybe it was on the page and Pike was just a perfect fit.
Pike’s role in Dagenham is that of a classy but under-appreciated wife of a Ford businessman (Rupert Graves). She only has one strong scene really — a special moment with Sally Hawkins‘ Rita O’Grady, the leader of an equal-pay-for-women strike, when she confesses what her somewhat stilted and smothered life has been like. But it’s the best scene in the film. At a recent Dagenham after-party I was asked, “So what did you think of Sally Hawkins’ performance?” It’s good and honorable, I replied, but the one who really touches bottom is Rosamund Pike.
The only problem from my perspective is that neither Made in Dagenham or Barney’s Version are strong enough to easily catapult Pike into the realm of “assured contender.” Some may feel differently and that’s fine, but neither film delivers on the level of An Education, say. They just don’t. People are going to have to sit down and see these films and realize on their own that Pike is the best thing about both, and then do and say something about that. You can lead horses to water, but you can’t make them drink.
Forbes columnist Bill McCuddy and his wife, who have a home in the Hamptons, were driving behind me last weekend and noticed that my tail lights were out. “Do you have a compact car with New Jersey plates?,” he asked in an e-mail sent last night. “My wife saw someone with his/her rear lights not working pulling into Enclave Inn” — where I was staying — “and came thisclose to pulling in after and telling them. Sorry. And next time call me to bail you out.”
The story I ran earlier this evening about AMC’s Movietickets.com having reported that Steven Soderbergh‘s Haywire (formerly Knockout) would be getting a one-week booking at Manhattan’s AMC Empire starting on Friday, 10.15 wasn’t wrong from my end — the listing was there — but AMC screwed up. They profusely apologized, I’m told, and deleted the entry earlier this evening.
I deleted my post a little after 10 pm, which is when I emerged from a showing of Barney’s Version at the Broadway Screening Room.
Social Network screenwriter Aaron Sorkin responded earlier today to a criticism voiced by a female reader of “By Ken Levine” — criticism which basically echoed general dissatisfaction among women that Sorkin’s female characters are too bimbo-ish and groupie-like.
Sorkin starts out by saying “I get it…it’s not hard to understand how bright women could be appalled by what they saw in the movie but you have to understand that that was the very specific world I was writing about…women are both prizes and equals.”
But his strongest point, I feel, is that there are three mature, together, super-sharp female characters in The Social Network, and that it’s these three who make the strongest impression. First and foremost is Rashida Jones‘s Marylin, the youngest lawyer on the team who has the films final line — “You’re not an asshole, Mark…you just try so hard to be.” And then Denise Grayson‘s Gretchen, Eduardo’s deposition lawyer “who, again, is nobody’s trophy,” Sorkin remarks. And Rooney Mara‘s Erica — an intelligent straight-shooter and “a class act,” he says.
Obviously Brenda Song‘s Christy starts out as Eduardo’s hot-to-trot girlfriend (sex in a bathroom stall), but she evolves into his girlfriend/partner without a pushover bone in her body. She may act in an irrational and excitable manner in her final scene (lighting his scarf on fire in his bedroom), but she certainly doesn’t seem bimboish — not at this stage. She’s very angry at Eduardo and letting him have it for calling himself “single” on his Facebook page.
There’a also Caitlin Gerard‘s Ashleigh, the Facebook intern who appears near the end. Not much of a part, but she seems to convey integrity and level-headedness, and is no bimbo by any standard I would apply.
So we’re really talking about five strongly defined female characters. Okay, four and a half. Okay, four. (Christy being a bit compromised in the beginning and Ashleigh not having enough screen time or dialogue to be called a character.)
So who are the Social Network bimbos and sex objects that stand out exactly? The girls in the Harvard “fuck truck” in the beginning and the party girls hanging out with Justin Timberlake‘s Sean Parker in Palo Alto and…who else? And none of these bimbo ladies are developed characters. And yet the Ken Levine commenter (named “Tarazza”) who took Sorkin to task feels that “he failed the women in this script…kind of a shame considering he’s written great women characters like C.J. Cregg.”
“Facebook was born during a night of incredibly misogyny,” Sorkin replies, agreeing with Tarazza in general terms. “The idea of comparing women to farm animals, and then to each other, based on their looks and then publicly ranking them. It was a revenge stunt, aimed first at the woman who’d most recently broke his heart (who should get some kind of medal for not breaking his head) and then at the entire female population of Harvard.
“Mark Zuckerberg‘s blogging that we hear in voiceover as he drinks, hacks, creates Facemash and dreams of the kind of party he’s sure he’s missing, came directly from Mark’s blog,” Sorkin explains. “With the exception of doing some cuts and tightening (and I can promise you that nothing that I cut would have changed your perception of the people or the trajectory of the story by even an inch) I used Mark’s blog verbatim. Mark said, ‘Erica Albright’s a bitch. Do you think that’s because all B.U. girls are bitches?’
“More generally, I was writing about a very angry and deeply misogynistic group of people. These aren’t the cuddly nerds we made movies about in the 80’s. They’re very angry that the cheerleader still wants to go out with the quarterback instead of the men (boys) who are running the universe right now. The women they surround themselves with aren’t women who challenge them (and frankly, no woman who could challenge them would be interested in being anywhere near them.)
“And this very disturbing attitude toward women isn’t just confined to the guys who can’t get dates.
“I didn’t invent the Fuck Truck — it’s real. And the men (boys) at the final clubs think it’s what they deserve for being who they are. (It’s only fair to note that the women — bussed in from other schools for the ‘hot’ parties, wait on line to get on that bus without anyone pointing guns at their heads.)
“These women — whether it’s the girls who are happy to take their clothes off and dance for the boys or Eduardo’s psycho-girlfriend are real. I mean REALLY real.
“I wish I could go door-to-door and make this explanation/apology to any woman offended by the things you’ve pointed out but obviously that’s unrealistic so I thought the least I could do was speak directly to you.”
Morgan Spurlock‘s Committed, an interview anthology show featuring directors who had flms at the Toronto Film Festival, wll debut on AMC. Question #1: TIFF ended over 20 days ago — in today’s ADD Twitter world doesn’t the airing of this seem a little slow? Question #2: Where’s Spurlock, and who’s the nerdy-looking guy with the tie and the glasses interviewing everyone?
Just because this failed to catch my attention for the last eleven months doesn’t mean its not amusing or clever or without a point. “Sgt. Pet Sounds and the Spiders from Aja”…perfect.
A winking homage to suave ’60s gadgetry in mid ’60s James Bond or Matt Helm movies. Co-directed by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola. On behalf of Stella Artois.
I didn’t pick up on yesterday’s “gay” controversy, sparked by an amusing (for me at least) Vince Vaughn riff in a trailer for Universal’s The Dilemma. I spent most of yesterday picking up the rental car from the spot where I was told to leave it early Monday morning by Officer Diamond, and then driving back from East Hampton and then returning the rental car to a Dollar agency in New Jersey, etc. But now I’m on it.
As one who took some heat a while back for using the term “gay music” (i.e, “I loathe ethereal, dreamily feminine and generally unpunctuated pop music…gliding along, un-rocked, non-Lou Reed-ish…music that seems dead set against making any kind of thump-crunchin’ sound…that seems to summon the candy-assed spirit and attitude of Michael Cera, and which the almost seems to exists in order to counteract and nullify the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll music”), I totally get what Vaughn’s character means when he says “electric cars are gay.”
Let’s try it again for the slow readers out there. There are two definitions of gay. The first simply means being homosexual, and we all know that for guys this generally doesn’t imply or allude to any of the dreary homophobic faggy concepts of yesterday. The second definition means lacking a certain softball-adept, baseball-hat wearing “guy” quality. Possessed of a certain gelatinous, salad-eating metrosexual attitude. Lacking a sense of timeless Steve McQueen coolness.
Universal has removed Vaughn’s “electric cars are gay” line from the trailer. It was cut, I suspect, because of that gay Rutgers freshman who committed suicide after being outed online, and because everyone is extra-sensitive now about anything that smacks of gayish slurs. There’s no telling if the line will stay in the feature, but I would guess not…right?
The outrage that Anderson Cooper and GLAAD have expressed seems to be like a deliberate misunderstanding of the term “gay” as Vaughn uses it.
In the trailer Vaughn defines gay as “not homosexual but my-parents-are-chaperoning-the-dance gay.” I’ve had Allan Loeb‘s screenplay on my laptop for nine months, and in the scripted Vaughn’s character (a schlub named Ronnie) goes on to say “not homosexual gay…but soft gay, unmanly gay, quiet and small gay“, and that “if you’re a real man…you don’t want an electronic car.”
It seems as if the differences between the current head-rolling situation at the Hollywood Reporter (i.e., traditional-minded reporter/editors like Elizabeth Guider and Andrew Wallenstein getting whacked by editorial director Janice Min, who will relaunch the trade as a glossy, celebrity-driven dead-tree weekly next month along with a daily online presence) and “the terror” under Maximilien Robespierre are mostly incidental and/or cosmetic.
It must be agony for vulnerable THR employees (i.e., those who aren’t Min-ions) to be waiting and wondering who’s next. Will it be your head? Mine?
That said, why did Guider choose to cite “personal family issues which take her regularly out of state and the desire to finish a book as reasons for her decision,” as reported by TheWrap‘s Brent Lang? She was whacked because she was a lame-duck leftover who didn’t fit into Min’s new plan — end of story.
“It has been an honor and a pleasure to lead The Hollywood Reporter‘s newsroom during such interesting, if challenging, times,” Guider said in a statement. “I wish our new owners and managers great success with their plans to take the brand to new heights and to a broadened readership.”
I’ve respectfully decided not to attend the Doha Tribeca Film Festival (10.26 to 10.30). I had announced my intention to cover in mid-August, but I gradually became convinced that it just wasn’t a fit. And that’s fine. I was extremely grateful for the respectful gesture of having been invited in the first place, and I’ve thanked everyone concerned and offered my best wishes.
Why did I take a pass on a free trip to a prestigious Middle Eastern film festival, which would have included lodging in a lavish first-class hotel with all kinds of gratis perks (screenings, parties, food and drink) plus a first-time exposure to an exotic culture? Because the trip promised two day-long interruptions in Hollywood Elsewhere’s daily output within a seven-day period, and because the intriguing films being shown at Doha Tribeca didn’t seem quite worth all the tribulations.
I was told yesterday that the Qatar Airlines flight to Qatar (adjacent to Saudi Arabia, south of Kuwait) wouldn’t offer wifi, which meant I’d not only endure a grueling nonstop 13-hour imprisonment (the return trip is 14-plus hours) but would be unable to work on the column while doing so, and the idea of HE going dark for two days over a seven-day period just seemed nuts.
Seriously — what first-class airline doesn’t offer wifi these days? That’s a disconnect.
There’s also some doubt as to whether electrical outlets are available for business-class passengers (which is what I would have been), so that would have meant not even being able to write stuff in preparation for HE placement after the battery dies.
On top of which a friend who’s been there told me that Doha is no Abu Dhabi — it’s a very strict cultural environment. And so it’s kinda boring over there. He also said that the bar downstairs charges $15 for a glass of wine, and that visitors can’t buy bottled wine anywhere or even bring a bottle or two with them on the plane. (They confiscate at the airport.) And that the town outside the corporate ghetto that the festival takes place in isn’t all that interesting.
On top of which the Qatar authorities have been been obsessive about getting a scan of my passport before finalizing the trip. I intended to get that taken care of, but it’s a mild pain with the tons of other things I have to get to every day. In the interim I sent along a high-quality color photo of my passport (which is essentially the same thing as a scan — a digital capturing of a paper document), but I was told this wouldn’t do.
So sometime last month I began asking myself why I’m doing this trip in the first place. Two plane trips involving 13 to 14 hours of agonizing fuselage confinement (“the plane flight is a ballbuster…there really is no way around that,” says a friend) without wifi or electric power? All so I can spend five days in a Middle Eastern Las Vegas in which a glass of Pinot Grigio cost $15 dollars, and with no top-headline, high-throttle films being shown?
“I don’t want to irritate Geoff Gilmore or Jane Rosenthal,” I confided to a friend, “but I’m starting to think to myself that if I could politely and diplomatically get out of this, it might not be a bad thing.” Now that I’ve done this and said thanks and extended best wishes, I feel better.
Again, I hope the Doha Tribeca Film Festival is a success this year, and for many years to come. If and when the Qatar Airlines wifi situation opens up down the road I’d be delighted to attend. And thanks again to the good Rubenstein p.r. people who facilitated .
The five kids from Davis Guggenheim‘s Waiting for Superman — Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, Emily and Anthony — with President Obama yesterday in the Oval Office.
AP photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais
The widely-admired Superman, which has a 93% Rotten Tomatoes rating, opened last Friday.
It wasn’t easy, but I’ve managed to not see Waiting for Superman for several months running. I missed it at Sundance, Toronto, and at last weekend’s Hamptons Film Festival. All of these misses were obviously my fault. And yet I was never invited to a single Manhattan screening by Paramount or agency reps. Not once.
I’ll correct this situation sometime this week. I’l catch it at a commercial venue or get a screener for Paramount reps.
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