In a piece that ran yesterday (3.12), Toronto Star critic Peter Howell declared that “of the many conspiracy theories advanced for why The Hurt Locker beat Avatar at the Academy Awards, the only one that holds water is based on terrified actors.
“The actors’ branch is the largest single bloc amongst the academy’s nearly 6,000 voters,” he reminds, “and the thinking goes that flesh-and-blood thespians balked at giving Best Picture to a movie that triumphantly featured computers over humans. A vote for Avatar, rightly or wrongly, was viewed as a vote to put yourself out of a job.”
Not to take anything away from Howell, but he’s echoing a suspicion that The Envelope‘s Pete Hammond had reported about three days earlier, having spoken to various older thesps at a pre-Oscar party last weekend.
Update: Howell has told me he resents an implication that he may have borrowed the idea from Hammond’s column without giving credit, which, being a totally respected pro, he always does when appropriate. He didn’t see Hammond’s column, he says, and based his piece on “discussions with real live sources.” I only meant to point out that Hammond was the first to run an interview-supported article suggesting that the actors killed Avatar‘s Best Picture shot — that’s all. Nothing more than that.
You can’t fully trust Variety‘s Joe Leydon when it comes to South by Southwest reviews. He’s a Houston guy, of course, and I for one have always sensed a certain local-pride spirit in his writings from this Austin-based festival. He also tends to go too easy on genre crap. And so I’m processing his rave review of Matthew Vaughn‘s Kick Ass (Lionsgate, 4.16), which had its big SXSW debut last night, with a degree of suspicion.
This despite an HE friend insisting via e-mail that Kick-Ass “is the real deal — trust me. Maybe a little too wanting to be controversial with the Hit Girl character but this is going to be very big. Cage hasn’t been this good in ages. The movie is a huge crowd-pleaser and more clever than the masses could ever imagine.”
“Kick-Ass most certainly does,” Leydon begins. “Equal parts audacious dark comedy, wish-fulfillment fantasy and over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek action-adventure, Matthew Vaughn’s bloody funny adaptation of a cult-fave comicbook series manages to be sufficiently faithful to its source material to please fervent fanboys while remaining easily accessible for ticketbuyers unfamiliar with the superhero storytelling conventions
“Vaughn (Layer Cake) and co-scripter Jane Goldman satirize as well as celebrate. Scenes of hilariously overstated violence perpetrated by an 11-year-old girl doubtless will discomfort many and incense quite a few. But this deservedly R-rated Lionsgate release should nonetheless score a knockout in theatrical and homevid venues.”
“Deservedly” R-rated? I think we all know what that means.
I know a bit about Vaughn from Layer Cake, at least to the extent that I know that he’s not exactly Mr. Subtle — i.e., he likes to lather it on and then some.
I’d be into the Robert Rodriguez–Nimrod Antal Predators (20th Century Fox, 7.9) if I was even half-persuaded that Predators will be to the original Predator what James Cameron‘s Aliens was to Ridley Scott‘s Alien — i.e., faster, more intense, emotionally grounded, a general uptick.
But of course, that can’t be. Not with Rodriguez’s B-movie aesthetic defining the perimeters. I respect Antal (Kontrol, Vacancies), but the fact that Rodriguez played Big Alpha Kahuna at last night’s South by Southwest preview tells you it’s basically his film. Wall Street Journal/Speakeasy‘s Eric Kohn filed a report early this morning about the event.
There’s almost nothing in the filing about about Kick Ass, which also screened last night. All Kohn says is that it’s “a vibrant take on the superhero movie genre.” That’s it? In other words, it’s a ho-hummer, a disappointment? It sure sounds that way because his next line says that Rodriguez’s Predators preview “stole the show.” That’s a little bit of a review, no?
Kohn’s full-on Kick Ass review is forthcoming.
Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson called it “a nasty hard-R superhero spoof designed to outrage and delight. And it will destroy at the b.o. when Liongsate opens it in two weeks.” “Nasty”? “Designed to outrage”? In other words, lacking in wit, cleverness, refinement. Sure sounds that way. Made for the animals.
I’ve run my share of typos on Hollywood Elsewhere. Hell, they happen every other hour. And I fix them as quickly as I can. When I spotted this Robert Rodriguez-related typo in a 3.12 Anne Thompson/Indiewire posting from South by Southwest, I knew she’d catch it sooner or later. And she has. But if she hadn’t I would have said that the proper phrasing should have been “he shat out both Predators and his own Machete,” etc.
I laughed, of course, because Rodriguez does shit his films out, like all genre wallowers who want nothing more than to operate from their cheesy little comfort zone.
We’ve all felt instant attractions to certain actors and actresses, and we’ve also felt instant repulsions. I was walking down Eighth Avenue yesterday when the one-sheet for She’s Out Of My League (Dreamworks, 3.12) caught my eye, and…I’m going to let readers guess which one of these dudes I took an instant dislike to. (Hint: not Jay Baruchel.) It was a kind of reverse thunderbolt sensation, and it involved no logic whatsoever. One look at that idiotically dorky smile and I knew.
A recent Criterion newsletter has included this visual clue for the officially un-announced but reportedly forthcoming Criterion Bluray of Terrence Malick‘s The Thin Red Line. If I’d written the caption I would have had the lion say, “I’ve never met a leaf I didn’t like.” That, at least, would directly allude to TTRL rather than “feelin’ red and blu.” A red lion doesn’t need to state the obvious.
Recently whacked Variety film critic Todd McCarthy has officially joined the notoriously dweeby New York Film Festival selection committee. Already in place, of course, are program director Richard Pena, NYFF associate director (and ex-LA Weekly film critic) Scott Foundas, Melissa Anderson and Dennis Lim. McCarthy told me a few days ago he’ll go to Cannes in this new capacity.
“If you ask a conservative Republican, you are likely to hear that Barack Obama is a skilled politician who campaigned as a centrist but is governing as a big-government liberal. He plays by ruthless, Chicago politics rules. He is arrogant toward foes, condescending toward allies and runs a partisan political machine.
“If you ask a liberal Democrat, you are likely to hear that Obama is an inspiring but overly intellectual leader who has trouble making up his mind and fighting for his positions. He has not defined a clear mission. He has allowed the Republicans to dominate debate. He is too quick to compromise and too cerebral to push things through.
“You’ll notice first that these two viewpoints are diametrically opposed.
“You’ll, observe, second, that they are entirely predictable. Political partisans always imagine the other side is ruthlessly effective and that the public would be with them if only their side had better messaging. And finally, you’ll notice that both views distort reality. They tell you more about the information cocoons that partisans live in these days than about Obama himself.” — from David Brooks‘ 3.11 column in the N.Y. Times.
Two recommendations-from-vested-parties pop through in Pete Hammond‘s final “Notes on a Season” column (until it resumes late next fall) — one about Anne Hathaway‘s already-praised performance in Ed Zwick‘s Love and Other Drugs, and the other about Brad Pitt‘s in Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life.
Hammond reports that the Zwick film, which will open during the 2010 Thanksgiving holiday, screened for select Fox executives on the 20th Century Fox lot Tuesday night. Fox co-chair Jim Gianopulos told him “it’s in remarkably good shape considering it doesn’t come out for nine months,” adding that he “would be stunned if Hathaway does not receive a nomination for this. She’s stupendous in this role. Jake [Gyllenhaal] is also very good.”
Last weekend Hammond spoke to Apparition chief Bob Berney about the Malick film, “which will be released the beginning of November but very likely to show up in Cannes well before that.
“[Berney] says the movie is like a dream and [that] Malick fans are going to be extremely happy. He also raves about Brad Pitt’s performance comparing him to Robert DeNiro in This Boy’s Life.” According to Berney people are going to see a side of Pitt they haven’t seen before.” In other words, he rants and raves and gets violent with his kids, and thereby screws up the son played by Sean Penn in his adult years.
My cryptic, sometimes emotionally brusque father went through a lot of bad stuff as a Marine Lieutenant in the South Pacific (Guam, Iwo Jima) during World War II, so you’d think I’d be at least half interested in HBO’s The Pacific, which will debut on Sunday, 3.14.
Curiously, or perhaps not so curiously, I’m not. Maybe because I’d rather not contemplate the source of many of my own emotional difficulties that came about due to my dad’s combat-influenced nature and personality (which included booze until he went into the program in the mid ’70s). That or there’s something about US-soldiers-vs-the-Japanese movies that I’ve never found very compelling. I can think of three exceptions: The Thin Red Line, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Heaven Knows Mr. Allison. Or maybe it’s just something to do with the Pacific region and malaria and spindly coconut trees and tall grass and crazy Japanese soldiers holed up in caves. I don’t know exactly.
That said, Alessandra Stanley‘s NY Times review of what I presume is the first two or three episodes sounds encouraging.
Barack and Michelle Obama hosted The Pacific producers Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg plus some HBO brass and Congresspersons and whomever else for a White House screening last night.
It would be wonderful to read in a Bob Woodward book some day that Obama took Spielberg off to a corner and said, “So what’s this I hear about you pussying out like a little girl with your Abraham Lincoln movie? I’m a Lincoln man from way back and I don’t get it. What, are you afraid of making another Amistad-type film and people shitting all over you…is that it? Let me tell you something. People have been shitting on you for years already for wimping out on this thing. I read Hollywood Elsewhere and I know what goes. And now you can add me to the agitate roster.
“I know you were a big Hilary supporter to begin with so let’s not crap around. Full disclosure and all that but I’m going to do what I can to shame you and if necessary fuck you up in any way I can in order to persuade you to pull the trigger on this movie. Are we clear on this? Fine. You didn’t know I was liike this, did you? Well, it’s a well-kept secret, I guess. Talk to me in private and I’m Lyndon Johnson. Or I’m starting to be him, I think. A change is coming over — I can feel it.”
“Last night I saw Sex and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll, the Andy Serkis/Ian Dury biopic,” a friend writes. “Although it opened in the UK two months ago to generally good reviews, I’m not sure of US distribution or if anyone here really cares.
The flick is quite good, and Sirkis gives an award-worthy performance,” he opined. “It goes a bit maudlin and overboard on the polio aspect — Dury spent part of his childhood at a home for the disabled — and gets a little Oliver Twist-y in parts. It also uses animation in some transition/montage scenes that recall (500) Days of Summer.”
There’s are reasons, I’m sure, why no US distributor has picked this film up, and why it never played Sundance, etc. I’d love to know what they are. Here’s a guess — selfish, self-destructive rock ‘n’ roll debauchery is not dramatically interesting or compelling. It can be argued, in fact, that it tends to be rather boring.
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