The three main Fighter guys — director David O. Russell, star-producer Mark Wahlberg and costar Christian Bale — did the Charlie Rose Show last night. What’s Bale’s accent? He sounds like he comes from some kind of naybuhhood.
I saw Ken Russell‘s The Music Lovers (’71) exactly once, but it’s one of my favorite Russell films, despite the tortured and sometimes grotesque tone of it. I’ve certainly never forgotten Richard Chamberlain‘s lead performance, or this performance scene of Peter Tchaikovsky‘s “Piano Concerto No. 1.” No one initially applauds at the end of the performance because they’re too moved, or so I recall.
Here, if you’re interested, is Van Cliburn performing the whole beautiful thing.
Last night I attended a NY Times “Times Talk” interview with Times critic Jason Zinoman interviewing Somewhere director Sofia Coppola and star Stephen Dorff. No photos or recording were allowed, but my own interview with Coppola (which happened three days ago at the Standard) was just as good.
I needed earphones to hear this on my Windows Toshiba laptop, but it sounds nice and robust on the iMac.
“I think it’s refreshing for an audience to get to breathe and not feel bombarded,” Coppola said about her film, “and to feel a kind of quiet…not have the same thing all the time. A lot of people tell me they think about it a lot after they’ve seen it, [that] it stays with them.”
Our conversation was all over the map, but it was relaxed and enjoyable, I felt. I chose not to prod or invade with heavy questions. It felt better to just glide through the clouds. “I’m not one of those early morning writers…I’m not a morning person,” she said at one point. “We have a place in Paris [but] my boyfriend’s band, Pheonix, has been on tour in the US, [and] I like being in New York. I always want to do something else [after doing a certain kind of film] but I’m not sure what….but I like doing a film the small way with a small crew. I try to do that, [make a film] every couple of years. I’m usually working on it. I’ll take a little pause to regroup or whatever.”
It runs out that HE’s recent TypePad problems were entirely the fault of the goons at HE’s server, Orbit/ThePlanet. “The basic problem was the server time clock began falling out of sync because of a bad motherboard,” HE’s tech guy, Brian Walker , explains. “As the time fell further offbase we began to notice symptoms like TypePad not validating logins because our server said the logins were not happening in real time.
“[But] when the techs gave us a new motherboard they messed up the time reset, making comments that were posted in the last 24 hours have a bad timestamp (3 days in the future). The techs fixed the clock ‘for real’ and we tinkered with the bad comments from the last 24 hours to get everything back up to speed. During that time many people had login problems and others could login and seemingly post, but their posts would not show up on the site due to the server clock. But all should now be well in HE Land.”
The Film Experience‘s Nathaniel Rogers has highlighted the names of several actors who should have been included in SAG’s Ensemble Award noms but weren’t. Black Swan‘s Benjamin Millepied. The Fighter‘s Jack McGee and Sugar Ray Leonard. The Kids Are All Right‘s Yaya daCosta. The King’s Speech‘s Eve Best (i.e., Mrs. Simpson). And The Social Network‘s Rooney Mara, Douglas Urbanski (i.e., that exquisite cameo as Larry Summers), John Getz, Rashida Jones (i.e., Zuckerberg’s attorney), Denise Grayson (Eduardo’s lawyer) and Brenda Song (Eduardo’s nutso girlfriend).
Director Blake Edwards, 88, has passed. It’s become an HE tradition to always say something a little too honest on these occasions, so here goes. For the last 45 years Edwards has been celebrated as a master of slapstick, but I found most of his stuff laborious, in part because so many of his films (certainly beginning in the early ’70s) exuded a square establishment sensibility. A respected auteur, surely, but he always seemed to me like a schmaltzy, well-paid, Malibu-colony type of guy.
I never sensed, in short, that Edwards’ film were about anything more than (a) the fact that he had a certain instinct for comic timing and orchestrating pratfalls, a gift that arguably put him in the same realm as Mack Sennett (but nowhere near that of Buster Keaton), and (b) that he enjoyed livin’ the high life and therefore felt compelled for some reason to stock his films with evidence or reflections of this. And I always hated the way his films were lighted and shot in typical big-studio “house” style.
Edwards had a good run with Peter Sellers, of course, but Sellers’ greatest director friend/ally was Stanley Kubrick, not Edwards.
Truth be told, there are only two Edwards films I really and truly admire (as opposed to liking or tolerating). One is Experiment in Terror (’62), a creepy no-frills noir about a terrorized bank teller (Lee Remick) and a cop (Glenn Ford) trying to protect her. The other is SOB (1981), an inside-Hollywood satire that feels somewhat realistic (Edwards finally got down with this one) and is full of roman a clef characters (Robert Vaughn as Bob Evans, Marisa Berenson as Ali McGraw, Shelley Winters as Sue Mengers, etc.)
The Edwards films I regard as “fine,” “okay” and/or “relatively decent” are Breakfast at Tiffany’s (except for Mickey Rooney‘s awful performance), Days of Wine and Roses (a very good drama), A Shot in the Dark (moderately funny at times), What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (loved some of this), The Party (some brilliant portions), Wild Rovers (decent western), 10 (overrated but funny at times), and the low-budget That’s Life (Jack Lemmon facing old age and male menopause depression — an honest and decent film).
In the wake of the SAG and Golden Globe noms, Scott Feinberg has statistically assessed which nominatable actors and actresses are looking pretty damn good, which are looking dicey, and which are more or less up shit creek.
This — right now, this morning, this past week, most of this month — has been one of the coolest ad moments in HE’s six-year history history with all the hotties flashing on and off and shouting “me, me, me…no, me!” It feels so cool, so right. All the sweat and struggle has been worth it. Nothing is easy and everything is hard, but in a racket like mine, this is about as good as it gets ad-wise.
“Mark Zuckerberg was recently named Time‘s Man of the Year. Who reads Time magazine? Old people who don’t read blogs. Why is this important? Because if Time says Zuckerberg is important he must be important. So maybe that movie about him is about more than just some asshole kid inventing a hot website. Maybe it really is about someone who changed the way the world works. Maybe I should give it another look. Maybe it really is better than The King’s Speech. Ahh, screw it — I’m voting for The Fighter.” — HE reader Matthew Morettini.
The Screen Actors Guild nominations are up, and there are at least three if not four outrageous omissions. Many fine people have been honored, but SAG, I feel, has truly shamed itself by failing to nominate Javier Bardem‘s legendary performance in Biutiful for Best Actor as well as Lesley Manville‘s shattering turn in Another Year for Best Actress.
Perhaps the biggest fall-on-the-floor WTF is SAG’s decision to nominate Jeff Bridges‘ True Grit performance as one of its five Best Actor hopefuls. This is just sloppy, chummy, boomer-fortified cronyism, pure and simple.
The third SAG outrage is nominating Hilary Swank‘s sufficient-but-nothing-special performance in Conviction for Best Actress. Because in so doing they’ve blown off the much more deserving Manville as well as Michelle Williams, who kills in Blue Valentine. It just makes me sick.
If you ask me Valentine‘s Ryan Gosling should have also been Best Actor-nominated, but I recognize that there are only so many slices in the pie and someone has to be left holding an empty plate.
They also blew off Animal Kingdom‘s Jacki Weaver for Best Supporting Actress. You know why? Five’ll get you ten a good portion of SAG’s membership hasn’t bothered to watch the Animal Kingdom screener. Plus they ignored all three of the Social Network guys — Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake and Armie Hammer. And yet they nominate Jeremy Renner for delivering a standard chilly psychopath turn in The Town? What bullshit!
The Bridges thing is mind-blowing. What is the big award-worthy deal about snortin’ and harumphin’ and stumblin’ around as scuzzy old Ruben Cogburn? Bridges knew he had a problem because of Cogburn’s similarities to his drunken Crazy Heart performer so he went with a deeper, drawlin’ gravel-gut voice and scowled a bit more and got to wear some old western duds and shoot a bunch of guys. And this results in a SAG nomination at Bardem’s and/or Gosling’s expense?
I’m not putting Bridges down. I would have done the same thing in his shoes. But the Ruben Cogburn role isn’t that intriguing or compelling. Was Bridges nominated because he’s charming and likable? That’s true, Bridges is that. He’s a very personable guy. So are the Coen brothers — a couple of very witty and likable fellows. So is Matt Damon — an ardent Hollywood lefty, hates Jimmy Kimmel, narrated Inside Job. So is John Boehner, I’ll bet, after a couple of drinks.
The other SAG-nominated Best Actor contenders are Colin Firth (The King’s Speech), James Franco (127 Hours), Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) and Robert Duvall (Get Low). Good for them.
The Best Actress nominees besides Swank are Natalie Portman (Black Swan), Annette Bening (The Kids Are All Right), Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone) and Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole).
The Best Supporting Actor nominees besides Renner are Christian Bale (The Fighter), John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone), Mark Ruffalo (The Kids Are All Right) and Geoffrey Rush (The King’s Speech).
It’s good that both Amy Adams and Melissa Leo have scored Best Supporting Female noms for their work in The Fighter. Good also on The King’s Speech‘s Helena Bonham Carter, Black Swan‘s Mila Kunis and True Grit‘s Hailee Steinfeld.
I would feel sullied by predicting Golden Globe wins so I didn’t respond to Tom O’Neil‘s queries about same. (Sorry, Tom!) But you don’t need to be Jimmy the Greek to realize than since The King’s Speech got the most Golden Globe nominations that it may be favored to win the awards for Best Drama and Best Actor (i.e., Colin Firth). That’s what a lot of the journalists who did respond (Pete Hammond, Dave Karger, Michael Musto, Steve Pond, Kris Tapley, Anne Thompson, et. al.) are expecting. Visionaries.
But of course the HFPA knows what most Academy members are also realizing, which is that championing The King’s Speech, well crafted as it is, will bestow the faint aroma of old-fartism upon their organization, and if they want to project a more youthful, forward-looking, 21st Century attitude they’ll want to go with The Social Network or The Fighter. O’Neil, Cinematical‘s Erik Davis, Film Experience‘s Nathaniel Rogers and Fandango‘s Chuck Walton are Network guys; USA Today‘s Suzie Woz and In Contention‘s Guy Lodge are Fighter fans.
In their 12.15 piece about yesterday’s announcement of the 2010 Golden Globe nominations, N.Y. Times reporters Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes report that “what got Hollywood buzzing was the complete shutout of a perceived Oscar front-runner — Paramount’s True Grit, directed by Ethan and Joel Coen — and the boost voters gave to The Fighter, a gritty boxing drama that took more than four years to make and that received six nominations.”
Cieply and Barnes are right — HFPA’s True Grit shutdown and its support of The Fighter was one hell of a surprise to the Hollywood community, and indeed to the world. Unless, that is, you’d been reading my comments about these films since they first began to be shown, in which case the Golden Globe noms would have gotten a shrug. I don’t give a shit about the Globes, but their nomination sentiments are usually in line with the Academy’s, and as soon as I saw these two films I sensed a fairly obvious current — The Fighter has it and True Grit doesn’t.
In a 12.1 review, I explained that Grit was a remote and mostly dislikable film, and that “craft only gets you so far…a film has to be about something that matters to many if not most people. True Grit [is] beautifully made with some deliciously formal old-west dialogue (much of it straight from the Charles Portis novel, I gather) and a smart, spunky debut performance from Hallie Steinfeld, but it’s basically a cold and mannered art western that matters not.
“The Coens are obviously cream-of-the-crop fellows but I didn’t give a hang about any of it. Their film has a certain historical charm and color but it feels too brusque and chilly, and it’s nowhere near as amusing as I’d heard it would be.”
In an 11.12 piece called “Fighter Takes Manhattan,” I said without equivocation that David O. Russell‘s film “is not a ‘possible’ Best Picture nominee,” as Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson had put it. “It’s a lock for it, and if this doesn’t happen something is really and emphatically wrong with the Academy membership.”
On 12.8 I wrote that I’d “suggested to a columnist pal that he needs to focus on the surging of The Fighter as a Best Picture contender. This is a really well-made, deeply populist, authentic blue-collar drama that’s much better and far less sappy than…I don’t even want to mention Sylvester Stallone‘s Rocky because it just diminishes The Fighter‘s brand when I do that.” And then I gushed again on 12.10.
So who was saying that True Grit would be a contender? David Poland (bestower of the “curse”), Anthony Breznican and…? And who was pooh-poohing The Fighter‘s chances? Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson said a few weeks back that Russell has to pay for his You Tube on-set tantrums, but of course Fighter costar Christian Bale is just as renowned in this realm and is all but guaranteed to be nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and is in fact looking like the likely winner. I don’t think Russell has any lingering Huckabees issues because he’s wearing his hair shorter, and since he was wearing it much longer during Huckabees people, I think, get the symbolism of this.
