I just turned in my 2019 Critics Choice Awards ballot. The winners will be revealed at the big CC awards show on Sunday, 1.13, inside Barker Hangar. My main criteria was to (a) vote for serious true-quality contenders and not necessarily the hive favorites, and (b) to not vote for A Star Is Born in any category. I’ve omitted four or five of the minor categories.
BEST PICTURE
Black Panther
BlacKkKlansman
The Favourite
First Man
Green Book
If Beale Street Could Talk
Mary Poppins Returns
Roma
A Star Is Born
Vice
JW PICK: Roma
BEST ACTOR
Christian Bale – Vice
Bradley Cooper – A Star Is Born
Willem Dafoe – At Eternity’s Gate
Ryan Gosling – First Man
Ethan Hawke – First Reformed
Rami Malek – Bohemian Rhapsody
Viggo Mortensen – Green Book
JW PICKWillem Dafoe, At Eternity’s Gate / Serious conflict — I wanted to vote for either First Reformed‘s Ethan Hawke or Vice‘s Christian Bale, but Dafoe’s Van Gogh slipped into my consciousness a couple of days ago and has hung in there.
BEST ACTRESS
Yalitza Aparicio – Roma
Emily Blunt – Mary Poppins Returns
Glenn Close – The Wife
Toni Collette – Hereditary
Olivia Colman – The Favourite
Lady Gaga – A Star Is Born
Melissa McCarthy – Can You Ever Forgive Me?
JW PICK: Glenn Close, The Wife / serious conflict here — my actual favorite is Melissa McCarthy but I’m also a Close supporter from way back. Plus a Close win at the CC awards will bolster her Oscar chances and thus lessen the odds favoring Lady Gaga.
8:26 pm: Bohemian Rhapsody beats A Star Is Born for Best Picture, Drama! Oh, joy and rapture! Bobby Peru, Bobby Peru, Bobby Peru…you know what just happened! And producer Graham King doesn’t even mention Bryan Singer???? Posted on 12.26.18: “Due Respect, But A Star Is Born Must Be Stopped.” We did it, kids! We did it! Oh, and Kris Tapley can kiss Hollywood Elsewhere’s ass.
8:16 pm: The glorious shutdown of A Star Is Born continues as Bohemian Rhapsody‘s Rami Malek wins for Best Actor! Hollywood Elsewhere is howling, whoo-hooing, rolling around the floor, slapping the thighs. “Thank you to Freddie Mercury!” But Malek didn’t thank Bryan Singer at all? Bohemian Rhapsody was Singer’s story, in a way. He channelled all of his life as a bad boy into Freddie’s character. It’s his mea culpa. It’s one thing to not mention an alleged sexual predator when you’re worried about losing, but after you’ve won…? Not even a minor mention?
8:05 pm: Lady Gaga HASN’T won the Golden Globe for Best Actress, Drama! The great Glenn Close wins instead! Amazing! Does this portend a corresponding Best Actor loss by A Star Is Born‘s Bradley Cooper? I’m hyperventilating, experiencing convulsions, having trouble breathing. Gaga has lost! Bobby Peru, this is for you!
7:56 pm: Green Book wins for Best Film, Musical or Drama. Are Robert Strauss and other like-minded critics red-faced and fuming as we speak? Maybe, maybe not. But I’d like to think so. Three Golden Globes for this very finely made film — a feel-good road dramedy that HE is proud to have praised and stood by through thick and thin. This is HE’s feel-good moment.
7:48 pm: HE’s own Olivia Colman (dead brilliant in Tyrannosaur) wins for Best Actress, Comedy or Musical for The Favorite. HE agrees, approves, applauds.
7:37 pm: Assassination of Gianni Versace wins for Best Limited Series or TV Movie. Fine. Never saw it. I will now.
7:35 pm: Sam Rockwell as Bob Fosse? Another awful Walmart commercial.
7:33 pm: Great iPhoneX commercial! Best commercial of the evening?
7:27 pm: Rachel Brosnahan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Best Performance by an Actress, TV series, Comedy or Musical. And Chuck Lorre‘s The Kaminsky Method wins for Best TV series, Comedy or Musical.
7:17 pm: Harrison Ford presents the Best Director award to Alfonso Cuaron. Which is a good thing because (I know this is going to sound small and mean) at least Bradley Cooper didn’t win. But it is good, I think, that A Star Is Born isn’t sweeping because ASIB is not an original film that comes from the culture that we’re all living and struggling in. And (forgive me) it does seem to increase the possibility that Cooper won’t win for Best Actor. Be honest — Cooper didn’t look overjoyed when Alfonso won.
7:08 pm: El Duderino is given the Cecil B. DeMille award. The career reel covers everything, but was there a clip from Stay Hungry (’76), one of his all-time greatest? A special thanks is offered to Peter Bogdanovich, the Coen brothers, Scott Cooper, “the late great Michael Cimino,” etc. Great quote: “We’ve all been tagged….we’re all here, all alive!” 2nd Great Quote: “We’re all trim tabs! Tag…you’re it”
7:04 pm: I need to watch Games of Games. Colorful rollicking sadism, etc.
6:56 pm: Tyler Perry asks, “Are the people at the Golden Globes as drunk as they seem? Yes, they are.” Darren Criss wins for his performance in The Assassination of Gianna Versace. Verdict on that floral tux jacket he’s wearing?
6:52 pm: Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma wins Best Foreign Language feature award. Fine & hearty congrats, but how is it that Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War wasn’t even nominated?
6:44 pm: Christian Bale will win Best Actor award for his vp Dick Cheney portrayal in Vice. That British working-class accent. Here’s to Bale’s upcoming portrayal as the “charisma-free” Mitch McConnell!
6:41 pm: Sharp Objects‘ Patricia Clarkson wins for Best Supporting Actress, TV
6:32 pm: Mahershala Ali wins Best Supporting Actor for Green Book! HE agrees, approves, applauds. It would have also been nice if Richard E. Grant (Can you Ever Forgive Me?) had won but Green Book is close to my heart. And now the Green Book screenplay has won! So Green Book is going to win for Best Film, Comedy or Musical…great. I’d like to think that at least a few of the p.c. tyrants who went after Green Book on twitter are grinding their teeth and punching their refrigerator doors as we speak. Feels pretty good on this end!
6:24 pm: GG co-host Sandra Oh wins for Best Actress, TV Drama for Killing Eve. Overdoing the shock and surprise and oh-my-God? Naaah.
6:18 pm: Regina King wins Best Supporting Actress for If Beale Street Could Talk. So now she’s back in the Oscar conversation? The fact that she was absent from the SAG noms indicated otherwise. Regina pledges that everything she produces over the next two years is going to “be 50% women”…okay!
6:12 pm: I hate these Walmart commercials — hate, hate, hate. I generally avoid the Walmart experience like the plague, but now my determination to steer clear is doubled down. I kind of hate the Die Hard-ish Brooklyn Nine-Nine trailer also — no offense.
6:04 pm: Justin Hurwitz wins Best Original Score for First Man! HE approves, agrees, applauds. And of course, “Shallow” wins for Best Song. Don’t overdue the emotionally overwhelmed thing, Ms. Bluehair…everyone but everyone was predicting this. Due respect.
5:57 pm: The legendary Carol Burnett looks pretty good. Great pipes in her prime. Tribute reel is nicely assembled. I’d forgotten about Friendly Fire (’79). “How incredibly fortunate I was top be there at the right time…the cost alone…48-piece orchestra…so grateful for the chemistry we had…our producer, our choreographer, our writers….one big happy family for 11 years (’67 to ’78)….I’m so glad we had this time together.”
5:54 pm: “This is Crazy Rich Asians, a money-whore movie that made a ton of money…”
5:53 pm: Alien Pepsi commercial is self-inflated, cloying, generally repulsive.
5:45 pm: Escape at Dannemora‘s Patricia Arquette win for Best Actress, Limited Series. HE agrees, applauds. The incarcerated Joyce “Tilly” Mitchelldoesn’t agree or applaud. Arquette played off, her speech having gone on.
5:43 pm: Ben Whishaw wins for Best Supporting Actor, A Very English Scandal. Whishaw is always good, but he played such a dreary dad in Mary Poppins Returns.
5:20 pm: Am I expected to know or care about Richard Madden winning winning Best Actor blah-dee-blah for Netflix’s The Bodyguyard? I don’t. I never will. Well, probably not. FX’s The Americans win for Best TV series, Drama….zzzzz. Secret Life of Pets 2 trailer…I hate animation with such a grand and terrible passion. Image quality on the Roma trailer looks so much better than the film did at the Aero the other night.
5:20 pm: SpiderMan: Into the Spider-Verse wins for Best Animated Film. Who’s the woman with the extremely styled hair behind the winners? Former Sony chief Amy Pascal.
5:16 pm: Michael Douglas wins Best Actor, TV Series, Musical or Comedy, The Kaminsky Method. “Chuck Lorre thinks getting old is funny.” “This has to go for my 102-year-old father Kirk…”
5:13 pm: Sandra Oh: “This moment of change…I see you, I see you, I see you.”
5:08 pm: Hollywood Elsewhere apologizes for the modem fritzing out, killing the cable signal. It took about six or seven minutes for everything to boot up again.
The year-end awards decided by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association are almost always outside the box. When they champion a film or a performance that I happen to share admiration for, I go “yay.” But more often my reaction to their oddball picks is (a) “huh, really?…okay” or (b) “what the fuck?” I will therefore signal my reactions today with either (Yay), (HRO) or (WTF).
I’m speaking for the world here. I’m speaking for every man, woman, child and dog on the planet earth. LAFCA awards are partly if not largely about their own challenge-to-conventional-thinking tradition. I’m not saying they’re not trying to salute quality, but they have to do that LAFCA thing, that “hey, look at us, we’re nervy and different” between bites of bagels and lox. Especially in this era of p.c. terror and intimidation by SJWs and virtue signallers — an era that seems to be rivalling the Commie-witch-hunt era of the late ’40 and ’50s.
Best Picture: Roma / (Yay) Runner up: Burning / Nope — shoulda been Cold War.
Best Director: Debra Granik, Leave No Trace / (HRO) Runner up: Alfonso Cuarón, Roma / (Yay)
Best Actor: Ethan Hawke, First Reformed / YES! All is forgiven, including the food break bullshit (bagels, lox and onions) — Hawke can’t be denied an Oscar nomination for Best Actor now. Runner up: Ben Foster, Leave No Trace / (WTF)
Best Actress: Olivia Colman, The Favourite / (Yay), fine but Melissa McCarthy is way, way better (and with a better-written role) in Can You Ever Forgive Me? Runner up: Toni Collette, Hereditary / (Yay)
Best Supporting Actress: Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk / (HRO) — King is the populqr p.c. choice and there’s no disputing she gave a good, commendable performance, but Vice‘s Amy Adams delivers more of an arresting, leap-off-the-screen jolt. Runner up: Elizabeth Debicki, Widows / (HRO)
Best Supporting Actor: Steven Yeun, Burning / (HRO) Runner up: Hugh Grant, Paddington 2 / (WTF) HE comment: They blew off Mahershala Ali‘s note-perfect, crowd-pleasing performance in Green Book because the p.c. elites have condemned Peter Farrelly‘s film because it had the audacity to tell a 1962 story by 1962 standards, and because it doesn’t pass along the progressive ethos of 2018. But there’s no excuse at all — none — for blowing off Richard E. Grant‘s performance in Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Best Screenplay: Nicole Holofcener, Jeff Whitty, Can You Ever Forgive Me? / (Yay) Runner up: Deborah Davis, Tony McNamara, The Favourite / Approved
“Trust love all the way” is the marketing slogan for Barry Jenkins‘ If Beale Street Could Talk (Annapurna, 12.14). I’m sorry but I regard that advice as a bill of goods.
Boil the snow out of Beale Street and the basic idea is this: Life is unfair and sometimes cruel, especially for POCs in ’70s Harlem and double-especially when a fraudulent rape charge lands poor young Fonny (Stephan James) in jail, leaving his pregnant young wife Tish (Kiki Layne) and their respective families (including Tish’s mom, played by Regina King) trying to somehow clear his name.
The basic drill is that justice is possible but too often unlikely, and in the end the thing that gets Fonny and Kiki through is love, as in (a) “black love is black wealth,” (b) “love is the fuel of survival, and (c) “despite the hardship and the fact that sometimes life sucks extra hard, love is the key to surviving the brutality of White America.”
Satisfying movies always deliver a sense of justice at the end. The punishing of the guilty, the exoneration of the innocent, he/she gets what’s coming to him/her. Some sense of balance and fairness. “As you sow, so shall you reap” = Michael Corleone at the end of The Godfather, Part II or Zampano at the end of La Strada.
The bold strategy of If Beale Street Could Talk (which I fully respect) is to deny this payoff to Fonny, Tish and their families, and therefore to the audience. And at the same time it offers the “love will see you through if you really trust it” homily, which I regard as more of a bromide.
I’m in no way questioning the message or the metaphor in James Baldwin’s same-titled 1974 novel, and the meaning of Beale Street as a condition, a state of mind, the blues and the history of that, you can’t sing it if you haven’t felt it, black Americans trying to get by and pull through despite a sometimes wicked system.
But If Beale Street Could Talk is fundamentally unsatisfying because people we’ve come to know and care about are handed a shit sandwich at the end. (Or at the very least my idea of one.) Which is why when it slips out of the safety cocoon of industry screenings and award-season events and critical praise and whatnot, Beale Street is going to quietly die. Which sometimes happens with good films.
The bottom line is that people generally don’t pay to see a film in order to share in the eating of a shit sandwich.
It’s okay with me if The Favourite‘s Olivia Colman wants to go for Best Actress, even if she’s not playing a lead role. I’ve accepted her strategy because you can’t fight City Hall, but I will not accept the forehead-slapping notion that the film’s two actual leads, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone, are now Supporting Actress contenders. Stone and Weisz’s characters, Abigail Masham and Sarah Churchill, are the main protagonists and manipulators — characters who are driving the palace plot and carrying the whole equation in their heads. I’ll bend over for Colman but I won’t prognosticate the other two as supporting contenders…no!
So who’s the Best Supporting Actress front-runner? You tell me. I’m still figuring it out.
It’s not If Beale Street Could Talk‘s Regina King, I can tell you that. She’s probably one of the five but that’s mainly because everyone keeps including her as one of the hotties — I honestly didn’t think her performance (i.e., the strong, compassionate mother of Kiki Layne) is more than a line-drive single.
What if I choose the supporting performance and supporting character whom I liked and admired the most? If I did that would be Green Book‘s Linda Cardellini. Second place is First Man‘s Claire Foy, I suppose, but I wonder how many people are saying “wow, great hand-wringing wifey-wife!” Then comes Vice‘s Amy Adams, whose performance as Lynne Cheney I’ve been hearing about since last spring. And then Roma‘s Marina de Tavira — a solid, planted performance that radiates ripe, feminine humanity.
I’ve given the fifth slot to Margot Robbie‘s performance as Queen Elizabeth in Mary, Queen of Scots because — I’m serious — of her deglamorized makeup (flaming red hair, pale complexion, blotchy skin). People are always impressed when a pretty actress goes semi-ugly.
I know I’ve listed these films several times, and that a good portion probably won’t matter in the long run, and that some may not even open this year, but I’ve listed them anyway. Which ones would you describe as pulse-quickening and which sound meh or dismissable?
1. Damien Chazelle‘s First Man (Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Corey Stoll, Kyle Chandler, Jason Clarke).
2. Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma (Marina de Tavira, Marco Graf, Yalitza Aparicio, Daniela Demesa, Enoc Leaño, Daniel Valtierra).
3. Adam McKay‘s Backseat (w/ Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell).
4. Cold War (d: Pawel Pawlikowski) (Joanna Kulig, Agata Kulesza, Borys Szyc, Tomasz Kot, Adam Ferency).
5. Bjorn Runge‘s The Wife (Glenn Close‘s Best Actress campaign + Jonathan Pryce, Christian Slater, Annie Starke. Max Irons).
6. Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born (w/ Cooper, Lady Gaga, Sam Elliott, Andrew Dice Clay and Dave Chappelle).
Topliners: 1. Damien Chazelle‘s First Man, a space drama about NASA’s Duke of Dullness, Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Corey Stoll, Kyle Chandler, Jason Clarke); 2. Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma (Marina de Tavira, Marco Graf, Yalitza Aparicio, Daniela Demesa, Enoc Leaño, Daniel Valtierra); 3. Adam McKay‘s Backseat (w. Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell); 4. Terrence Malick‘s Radegund (August Diehl, Valerie Pachner, Michael Nyqvist, Matthias Schoenaerts, Jürgen Prochnow, Bruno Ganz); 5. Bjorn Runge‘s The Wife (Glenn Close‘s Best Actress campaign + Jonathan Pryce, Christian Slater, Annie Starke. Max Irons).
6. Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born, w/ Cooper, Lady Gaga, Sam Elliott, Andrew Dice Clay, and Dave Chappelle. 7. Felix von Groeningen‘s Beautiful Boy with Steve Carell and Timothy Chalamet; 8. Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader Ginsburg in On The Basis of Sex; 9. Saoirse Ronan in Mary, Queen of Scots (w/ Margot Robbie, David Tennant, Jack Lowden, Guy Pearce); 10. David Lowery‘s The Old Man and the Gun w/ Robert Redford, Casey Affleck, Sissy Spacek, Danny Glover, Tika Sumpter, Tom Waits, Elisabeth Moss.
11. Steve McQueen‘s Widows (Viola Davis, Cynthia Erivo, Andre Holland, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez, Daniel Kaluuya, Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell); 12. Barry Jenkins‘ If Beale Street Could Talk (Kiki Layne, Stephan James, Teyonah Parris, Regina King, Colman Domingo, Brian Tyree Henry, Diego Luna, Dave Franco); 13. Bryan Singer‘s Bohemian Rhapsody (15-year period from the formation of Queen and lead singer Freddie Mercury up to their performance at Live Aid in 1985) w/ Rami Malek, Ben Hardy, Gwilym Lee, Joseph Mazzello, Allen Leech, Lucy Boynton. (20th Century Fox, 12.25.18); 14. Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria (Dakota Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth); 15. Xavier Dolan‘s The Death and Life of John F. Donovan (Kit Harington, Natalie Portman, Jessica Chastain, Susan Sarandon, Kathy Bates).
16. Spike Lee‘s Black Klansman (John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, Corey Hawkins — Focus Features); 17. Stefanio Solluima‘s Soldado (Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Catherine Keener (Columbia, 6.29.18); 18. Asghar Farhadi‘s Todos lo saben (Spanish-language drama w/ Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Barbara Lennie, Ricardo Darin, Inma Cuesta, Eduard Fernandez Javier Camara); 19. James Gray‘s Ad Astra, w/ Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Donald Sutherland, Jamie Kennedy; 20. Benh Zeitlin‘s Wendy (was filming in March ’17, should be released by late ’18).
Reginald Hudlin‘s Marshall (Open Road, 10.13) is a reasonably engaging, racially-charged courtroom drama in the classic mold, and by that I mean it follows a certain scheme (good-guy underdog vs. tainted establishment) and a certain path (things look shaky and then dispiriting for the good guys before the clouds part and God smiles). You can say “I’ve seen this kind of thing before” but it’s the singer, not the song, and anyone with a fair-minded attitude would have to conclude that Marshall is at least somewhat different, and that Hudlin (who hasn’t directed a feature since ’02’s Serving Sara) has done a better-than-decent job of fusing it all together.
Marshall doesn’t re-invent the wheel, but it’s a moderately okay, good-enough thing. It’s intelligent, efficient, well-shot, not a burn, contains decent performances, etc.
Marshall is about an innocent black defendant charged with raping a white woman, and defended by a heroic, soft-spoken, highly principled attorney, and with the locals 100% convinced, of course, that the black guy did it, but with late-arriving testimony eventually pointing to the defendant…well, not being exactly “innocent” but at the same time not guilty of having initiated contact, much less sexual assault.
Sound familiar? The same kind of rape trial served as the dramatic centerpiece of To Kill A Mockingbird, except here it’s (a) a true story, (b) set in 1940s Bridgeport, Connecticut instead of early 30s rural Alabama, and (c) focuses not on some noble Atticus Finch-like character but young NAACP attorney and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman) as the principal defender.
Assisting Marshall (76 years ago as well as in the film) is another real-life figure, Jewish civil attorney Sam Friedman, who was forced to handle the case verbally and procedurally when the presiding judge (James Cromwell) forbade Marshall from speaking during the trial due to his not being a member of the Connecticut bar.
Boseman (Black Panther, 42, Get On Up) plays Marshall like a brilliant, well-mannered hotshot who’s just parachuted in from 2017. A very good-looking, well-dressed black attorney with a low-key, “everything’s cool but don’t fuck with me” attitude like Steve McQueen‘s Lieutenant Bullitt. He talks tough, throws some punches in a bar, drinks water from a “whites only” fountain, winks at the ladies, and says “fuck you” to a fellow attorney in a rare moment of anger.
Given the unenlightened racial attitudes that unfortunately prevailed in the early 40s, you might expect Boseman to sprinkle a little Sidney Poitier into his performance, but nope. He’s well-mannered but blunt-spoken, confident, straight from the shoulder, no pussyfooting around. A cool-cat fantasy figure.
Eric Anderson‘s Awardswatch pallies have somehow divined (possibly by reaching in and exploring the recesses of their anal cavities) that Todd Haynes‘ Wonderstruck is the hottest Best Picture contender of 2017. The dual-era drama will play in competition later this month at the Cannes Film Festival.
Also highlighted are Denis Villenueve‘s Blade Runner 2049 (Warner Bros, 10.6), George Clooney‘s Suburbicon (Paramount, 11.3), Darren Aronofsky‘s mother! (Paramount. 10.13), Richard Linklater‘s Last Flag Flying (Amazon), Martin McDonagh‘s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Fox Searchlight, 10.13), The Current War (Weinstein Co, 12.22), Get Out (Universal, 2.24), The Greatest Showman (20th Century Fox, 12.25) and Michael Haneke‘s Happy End (Sony Pictures Classics)
HE’s Oscar Balloon projections are more or less in line with Awardswatch’s, save for the inclusion of Lean on Pete. So far I’m not getting the thing about that.
I do the same kind of easy-default Sundance Film Festival spitballing every December. I checkmark the titles, directors and actors I know or trust on some level and work outward from there. Per longstanding tradition, I’ll be able to see around 20 to 25 films during my nine days in Park City, depending on stamina and whatnot. (The festival runs from 1.21 to 1.31.) I’m naturally looking for tips from anyone who knows anything about potentially cool obscuros. So here goes with the boldfacing primes vs. shoulder-shruggers — so far I’ve got 20 prime titles, and that’s not including any Dramatic Competition titles:
PRIME PREMIERES:
Ali & Nino / United Kingdom (Director: Asif Kapadia, Screenwriter: Christopher Hampton) — Muslim prince Ali and Georgian aristocrat Nino have grown up in the Russian province of Azerbaijan. Their tragic love story sees the outbreak of the First World War and the world’s struggle for Baku’s oil. Ultimately they must choose to fight for their country’s independence or for each other. Cast: Adam Bakri, Maria Valverde, Mandy Patinkin, Connie Nielsen, Riccardo Scamarcio, Homayoun Ershadi. World Premiere.
Certain Women / U.S.A. (Director: Kelly Reichardt, Screenwriter: Kelly Reichardt based on stories by Maile Meloy) — The lives of three woman intersect in small-town America, where each is imperfectly blazing a trail. Cast: Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, James Le Gros, Jared Harris, Lily Gladstone. World Premiere.
Complete Unknown / U.S.A. (Director: Joshua Marston, Screenwriters: Joshua Marston, Julian Sheppard) — When Tom and his wife host a dinner party to celebrate his birthday, one of their friends brings a date named Alice. Tom is convinced he knows her, but she’s going by a different name and a different biography—and she’s not acknowledging that she knows him. Cast: Rachel Weisz, Michael Shannon, Kathy Bates, Danny Glover. World Premiere.
Frank & Lola / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Matthew Ross) — A psychosexual noir love story—set in Las Vegas and Paris—about love, obsession, sex, betrayal, revenge and, ultimately, the search for redemption. Cast: Michael Shannon, Imogen Poots, Michael Nyqvist, Justin Long, Emmanuelle Devos, Rosanna Arquette. World Premiere.
I was expecting to feel really badly this morning. Now not so much. The nominations are what matter & what sells so hooray for David O. Russell‘s Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay nominations for Silver Linings Playbook, and also Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro and Jackie Weaver‘s noms — four for effing four. Eight nominations in all. That’s industry emotion. I knew. And I stood alone, all alone, against an army of haters who are now silent and seething. Bitches!
Congratulations to the Queen of Oscar Land, Lisa Taback!!!
As I tweeted 14 minutes ago, “Lincoln will win Best Picture, but at least hard cases like N.Y. Post critic Lou Lumenick are actively pondering the highly unlikely fantasy of Silver Linings Playbook winning.”
I’m personally sorry for the sake of the Best Director snubbees: Argo‘s Ben Affleck, Zero Dark Thirty‘s Kathryn Bigelow. I guess that’s it for Argo and ZD30 as Best Picture contenders…but maybe not in the latter case. Congrats to Mark Boal for his Best Original Screenplay nomination, which (just guessing) he’ll probably win as a compensation for the Bigelow snub. I’ll obviously be delighted if ZD30 wins BP. But the Kathryn shutdown means the haters stopped enough people from voting for her.
Not sorry about Django‘s Quentin Tarantino being left out.
A surprised congrats to Beasts of the Southern Wild for its Best Picture nomination, and particularly its director, Benh Zeitlin, and lead actress, Quvenzhane Wallis.
Best motion picture of the year:
“Amour” Nominees to be determined
“Argo” Grant Heslov, Ben Affleck and George Clooney, Producers
“Beasts of the Southern Wild” Dan Janvey, Josh Penn and Michael Gottwald, Producers
“Django Unchained” Stacey Sher, Reginald Hudlin and Pilar Savone, Producers
“Les Misérables” Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Debra Hayward and Cameron Mackintosh, Producers
“Life of Pi” Gil Netter, Ang Lee and David Womark, Producers
“Lincoln” Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, Producers
“Silver Linings Playbook” Donna Gigliotti, Bruce Cohen and Jonathan Gordon, Producers
“Zero Dark Thirty” Mark Boal, Kathryn Bigelow and Megan Ellison, Producers
Best Achievement in directing:
“Amour” Michael Haneke
“Beasts of the Southern Wild” Benh Zeitlin
“Life of Pi” Ang Lee
“Lincoln” Steven Spielberg
“Silver Linings Playbook” David O. Russell
Best Performance by an actor in a leading role:
Bradley Cooper in “Silver Linings Playbook”
Daniel Day-Lewis in “Lincoln”
Hugh Jackman in “Les Misérables”
Joaquin Phoenix in “The Master”
Denzel Washington in “Flight”
Best Performance by an actor in a supporting role:
Alan Arkin in “Argo”
Robert De Niro in “Silver Linings Playbook”
Philip Seymour Hoffman in “The Master”
Tommy Lee Jones in “Lincoln”
Christoph Waltz in “Django Unchained”
Best Performance by an actress in a leading role:
Jessica Chastain in “Zero Dark Thirty”
Jennifer Lawrence in “Silver Linings Playbook”
Emmanuelle Riva in “Amour”
Quvenzhané Wallis in “Beasts of the Southern Wild”
Naomi Watts in “The Impossible”
Best Performance by an actress in a supporting role:
Amy Adams in “The Master”
Sally Field in “Lincoln”
Anne Hathaway in “Les Misérables”
Helen Hunt in “The Sessions”
Jacki Weaver in “Silver Linings Playbook”
Best animated feature film of the year:
“Brave” Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman
“Frankenweenie” Tim Burton
“ParaNorman” Sam Fell and Chris Butler
“The Pirates! Band of Misfits” Peter Lord
“Wreck-It Ralph” Rich Moore
Best Achievement in cinematography:
“Anna Karenina” Seamus McGarvey
“Django Unchained” Robert Richardson
“Life of Pi” Claudio Miranda
“Lincoln” Janusz Kaminski
“Skyfall” Roger Deakins
Best Achievement in costume design:
“Anna Karenina” Jacqueline Durran
“Les Misérables” Paco Delgado
“Lincoln” Joanna Johnston
“Mirror Mirror” Eiko Ishioka
“Snow White and the Huntsman” Colleen Atwood
Best documentary feature:
“5 Broken Cameras”
Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi
“The Gatekeepers”
Nominees to be determined
“How to Survive a Plague”
Nominees to be determined
“The Invisible War”
Nominees to be determined
“Searching for Sugar Man”
Nominees to be determined
Best documentary short subject:
“Inocente”
Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine
“Kings Point”
Sari Gilman and Jedd Wider
“Mondays at Racine”
Cynthia Wade and Robin Honan
“Open Heart”
Kief Davidson and Cori Shepherd Stern
“Redemption”
Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill
Best Achievement in film editing:
“Argo” William Goldenberg
“Life of Pi” Tim Squyres
“Lincoln” Michael Kahn
“Silver Linings Playbook” Jay Cassidy and Crispin Struthers
“Zero Dark Thirty” Dylan Tichenor and William Goldenberg
Best foreign language film of the year:
“Amour” Austria
“Kon-Tiki” Norway
“No” Chile
“A Royal Affair” Denmark
“War Witch” Canada
Best Achievement in makeup and hairstyling:
“Hitchcock”
Howard Berger, Peter Montagna and Martin Samuel
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”
Peter Swords King, Rick Findlater and Tami Lane
“Les Misérables”
Lisa Westcott and Julie Dartnell
Best achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)
“Anna Karenina” Dario Marianelli
“Argo” Alexandre Desplat
“Life of Pi” Mychael Danna
“Lincoln” John Williams
“Skyfall” Thomas Newman
Best Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)
“Before My Time” from “Chasing Ice”
Music and Lyric by J. Ralph
“Everybody Needs A Best Friend” from “Ted”
Music by Walter Murphy; Lyric by Seth MacFarlane
“Pi’s Lullaby” from “Life of Pi”
Music by Mychael Danna; Lyric by Bombay Jayashri
“Skyfall” from “Skyfall”
Music and Lyric by Adele Adkins and Paul Epworth
“Suddenly” from “Les Misérables”
Music by Claude-Michel Schönberg; Lyric by Herbert Kretzmer and Alain Boublil
Best Achievement in production design:
“Anna Karenina”
Production Design: Sarah Greenwood; Set Decoration: Katie Spencer
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”
Production Design: Dan Hennah; Set Decoration: Ra Vincent and Simon Bright
“Les Misérables”
Production Design: Eve Stewart; Set Decoration: Anna Lynch-Robinson
“Life of Pi”
Production Design: David Gropman; Set Decoration: Anna Pinnock
“Lincoln”
Production Design: Rick Carter; Set Decoration: Jim Erickson
Best animated short film:
“Adam and Dog” Minkyu Lee
“Fresh Guacamole” PES
“Head over Heels” Timothy Reckart and Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly
“Maggie Simpson in “The Longest Daycare”” David Silverman
“Paperman” John Kahrs
Best live action short film:
“Asad” Bryan Buckley and Mino Jarjoura
“Buzkashi Boys” Sam French and Ariel Nasr
“Curfew” Shawn Christensen
“Death of a Shadow (Dood van een Schaduw)” Tom Van Avermaet and Ellen De Waele
“Henry” Yan England
Best Achievement in sound editing:
“Argo” Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn
“Django Unchained” Wylie Stateman
“Life of Pi” Eugene Gearty and Philip Stockton
“Skyfall” Per Hallberg and Karen Baker Landers
“Zero Dark Thirty” Paul N.J. Ottosson
Best Achievement in sound mixing:
“Argo”
John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff and Jose Antonio Garcia
“Les Misérables”
Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson and Simon Hayes
“Life of Pi”
Ron Bartlett, D.M. Hemphill and Drew Kunin
“Lincoln”
Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom and Ronald Judkins
“Skyfall”
Scott Millan, Greg P. Russell and Stuart Wilson
Best Achievement in visual effects:
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”
Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton and R. Christopher White
“Life of Pi”
Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer and Donald R. Elliott
“Marvel’s The Avengers”
Janek Sirrs, Jeff White, Guy Williams and Dan Sudick
“Prometheus”
Richard Stammers, Trevor Wood, Charley Henley and Martin Hill
“Snow White and the Huntsman”
Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Philip Brennan, Neil Corbould and Michael Dawson
Best Adapted screenplay:
“Argo” Screenplay by Chris Terrio
“Beasts of the Southern Wild” Screenplay by Lucy Alibar & Benh Zeitlin
“Life of Pi” Screenplay by David Magee
“Lincoln” Screenplay by Tony Kushner
“Silver Linings Playbook” Screenplay by David O. Russell
Best Original screenplay:
“Amour” Written by Michael Haneke
“Django Unchained” Written by Quentin Tarantino
“Flight” Written by John Gatins
“Moonrise Kingdom” Written by Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola
“Zero Dark Thirty” Written by Mark Boal
Frank S. Nugent was the reigning New York Times film critic from 1936 to 1940, and a fairly young one — 28 when he landed the job and 32 when he left it. He gradually segued into screenwriting and wrote 21 film scripts until his death in 1965 at age 57. (Obviously something befell him.) 11 of those scripts were for director John Ford, including The Quiet Man, Mister Roberts and, most notably, The Searchers.
Last night I turned to Nugent’s March 1940 review of Rebecca to get the Tooze effect out of my head, and it hit me all over again that Nugent could write like Joe DiMaggio could hit, and that he really knew the world that he lived in, and was as knowledgable about the language of film and the nature of powerful, talented types and the ins and outs of Hollywood poltics as anyone else, Manny Farber or Andre Bazin or anyone in that high-falutin’ realm included.
Savor this, and note how Nugent felt obliged to define the word “cineaste”:
“Before getting into a review of Rebecca, we must say a word about the old empire spirit. Hitch has it — Alfred Hitchcock that is, the English master of movie melodramas, rounder than John Bull, twice as fond of beef, just now (with Rebecca) accounting for his first six months on movie-colonial work in Hollywood. The question being batted around by the cineastes (hybrid for cinema-esthetes) was whether his peculiarly British, yet peculiarly personal, style could survive Hollywood, the David O. Selznick of Gone with the Wind the tropio palms, the minimum requirements of the Screen Writers Guild and the fact that a good steak is hard to come by in Hollywood.
“But depend on the native Britisher’s empire spirit, the policy of doing in Rome not what the Romans do, but what the Romans jolly well ought to be civilized into doing. Hitch in Hollywood, on the basis of the Selznick Rebecca at the Music Hall, is pretty much the Hitch of London’s The Lady Vanishes and The Thirty-nine Steps, except that his famous and widely-publicized ‘touch’ seems to have developed into a firm, enveloping grasp of Daphne du Maurier‘s popular novel. His directorial style is less individualized, but it is as facile and penetrating as ever; he hews more to the original story line than to the lines of a Hitch original; he is a bit more respectful of his cast, though not to the degree of close-up worship exacted by Charles Laughton in Jamaica Inn.
“What seems to have happened, in brief, is that Mr. Hitchcock, the famous soloist, suddenly has recognized that, in this engagement, he is working with an all-star troupe. He makes no concession to it and, fortunately, vice versa.
“So Rebecca — to come to it finally — is an altogether brilliant film, haunting, suspenseful, handsome and handsomely played. Miss du Maurier’s tale of the second mistress of Manderley, a simple and modest and self-effacing girl who seemed to have no chance against every one’s — even her husband’s — memories of the first, tragically deceased Mrs. de Winter, was one that demanded a film treatment evocative of a menacing mood, fraught with all manner of hidden meaning, gaited to the pace of an executioner approaching the fatal block. That, as you need not be told, is Hitchcock’s meat and brandy.
“In Rebecca his cameras murmur ‘Beware!’ when a black spaniel raises his head and lowers it between his paws again; a smashed china cupid takes on all the dark significance of a bloodstained dagger; a closed door taunts, mocks and terrifies; a monogrammed address book becomes as accusative as a district attorney.
“Miss du Maurier’s novel was an ‘I’ book, its story told by the second, hapless Mrs. de Winter. Through Mr. Hitchcock’s method, the film is first-personal too, so that its frail young heroine’s diffident blunders, her fears, her tears are silly only at first, and then are silly no longer, but torture us too. Rebecca’s ghost and the Bluebeard room in Manderley become very real horrors as Mr. Hitchcock and his players unfold their macabre tale, and the English countryside is demon-ridden for all the brightness of the sun through its trees and the Gothic serenity of its manor house.
“But here we have been giving Mr. Hitchcock and Miss du Maurier all the credit when so much of it belongs to Robert Sherwood, Philip MacDonald, Michael Hogan and Joan Harrison who adapted the novel so skillfully, and to the players who have re-created it so beautifully. Laurence Olivier‘s brooding Maxim de Winter is a performance that almost needs not to be commented upon, for Mr. Olivier last year played Heathcliffe, who also was a study in dark melancholy, broken fitfully by gleams of sunny laughter. Maxim is the Heathcliffe kind of man and Mr. Olivier seems that too. The real surprise, and the greatest delight of them all, is Joan Fontaine‘s second Mrs. de Winter, who deserves her own paragraph, so here it is:
“Rebecca stands or falls on the ability of the book’s ‘I’ to escape caricature. She was humiliatingly, embarrassingly, mortifyingly shy, a bit on the dowdy side, socially unaccomplished, a little dull; sweet, of course, and very much in love with — and in awe of — the lord of the manor who took her for his second lady. Miss du Maurier never really convinced me any one could behave quite as the second Mrs. de Winter behaved and still be sweet, modest, attractive and alive. But Miss Fontaine does it — and does it not simply with her eyes, her mouth, her hands and her words, but with her spine. Possibly it’s unethical to criticize performance anatomically. Still we insist Miss Fontaine has the most expressive spine — and shoulders! — we’ve bothered to notice this season.
“The others, without reference to their spines — except that of Judith Anderson’s housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, which is most menacingly rigid — are splendidly in character: George Sanders as the blackguard, Nigel Bruce and Gladys Cooper as the blunt relatives, Reginald Denny as the dutiful estate manager, Edward Fielding as the butler and — of course — Florence Bates as a magnificent specimen of the ill-bred, moneyed, resort-infesting, servant-abusing dowager.
“Hitch was fortunate to find himself in such good company but we feel they were doubly so in finding themselves in his.”
