Wall Street Journal “Speakeasy” contributor Steven Kurutz has interviewed EW‘s Dave Karger, And The Winner Is columnist Scott Feinberg and myself for a short 3.10 piece called “Oscar Bloggers On the Existential Silence of Post-Awards Season.” I told Kurutz that there’s no silence for me at all — that I never stop and it just keeps on keepin’ on, 24-7 and 365. “I desire to serve God and become rich, like all men.” Who said that? In what film, I mean?
Even by my blunt-talk standards, Howard Stern‘s two-day-old comments about Gabourey Sidibe seemed needlessly cruel. Sidibe will, I expect, find acting work here and there, but not much. She’ll reportedly next play a role in the Showtime series The C Word and then a role in a feature called Yelling to the Sky. But Stern isn’t wrong in saying that her prospects are limited.
Yesterday I was asked to comment about Sidibe by a writer for Turner who believes that Sidibe may have broken through a weight barrier, and is perhaps positioned to strike a blow for other obese girls who ‘ve been discriminated against because of their size, etc. I replied as follows:
“I loved Gabby’s smile and vibe and I don’t want her to not work, but the only roles she’ll have a shot at playing will be downmarket moms and hard-luck girls working at Wal-mart — that line of country. Unless she drops the tonnage she’s facing a very limited future as an actress. No casting director would choose her to play anyone in the upscale executive world because — hello? — no one in the executive world looks like her. No casting director would choose her to play a gym teacher, or a big-wave surfer, or a Washington lobbyist, or a U.S. Congresswoman, or a park ranger, or a fire-fighter, or a soldier (I’ve never seen morbidly obese women in uniform…have you?) or a saleswoman in an apparel shop (no woman would trust her sartorial judgment), or a narcotics detective.
“Could she even play a cab driver? Could a person of her proportion even fit behind the wheel of an average cab? I’m just asking.
“Gabby is as out of the realm of mainstream normality as a seven foot-tall giant or a wheelchair person with polio. She will have serious health problems later in life if she doesn’t lose about half her body weight, at least. Whether we like to hear this or not, she represents a kind of low-rent affliction and a pattern of self-destruction.
“And you’re not doing Gabby any favors by coddling her with approving profiles and patting her on the back and saying ‘you go, girl’ — she’s got a serious problem. And you’re also telling other morbidly obese young women that it’s okay to be that way. It’s not — it’s bad for the health. Only in a country like ours in which the population is as addicted to crappy fatty foods as heroin addicts are to the needle.”
Okay, now bring on the hate and call me a terrible person for being insensitive, etc.
When I first heard the news about Corey Haim’s drug death I reminded myself right away that it wasn’t Corey Feldman, who used to be friendly with Julia Phillips, whom I knew and loved and cared for throughout the ’90s. This is the other guy whom I never knew or cared about or paid attention to…sorry. (They were called “the Two Coreys.”) Life is hard and wounding, but either you stand up and man up at a certain point or you don’t. Sic semper druggies and party animals.
69th and Lexington around 8:25 pm this evening.
Exploding Girl star Zoe Kazan prior to last night’s Tribeca Grand Hotel premiere screening.
Perry Street near West 4th, just after yesterday’s visit to Extra Virgin.
Since MCN’s David Poland never posts the final roster of Gurus of Gold Oscar tallies, I’m doing so as a public service. The big winner was In Contention‘s Kris Tapley; the runner-up was Envelope columnist Pete Hammond.
This is out of 21 Oscar categories, mind. The Gurus don’t survey Live Action Short, Animated Short , or Documentary Short. Tapley missed all three of these in his official predictions at In Contention while Hammond got two out of three right at The Envelope. If these had been included Tapley and Hammond would have tied for first with 19 correct each, so call it even.
Tapley, as noted, was first with 19 out of 21. Hammond got 17 right. Then came EW‘s Dave Karger (17), USA Today‘s Susan Wloszczyna/”Suzie Woz” (17), Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone (17), Poland (17), The Wrap‘s Steve Pond (17), Hitfix‘s Greg Ellwood (16), Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell (16), Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson (16), L.A. Times‘ Mark Olsen (16), USA Today‘s Scott Bowles (15), Indiewire‘s Eugene Hernandez (15), USA Today‘s Anthony Breznican (14) and EW‘s Sean Smith (13).
A two-week-old theatrical neck stabbing in Lancaster, California, was reported in today’s L.A. Times. A guy had complained about a woman talking on her cell phone during a 9 pm Saturday showing of Shutter Island at the Cinemark 22. The woman and two guys left the theatre, and then the two guys returned minutes later and stabbed the complainer in the neck with a meat thermometer.
What would Detective Columbo make of this? Let’s see….well, the first deduction would be that the assailants were blue-collar mongrels of some kind, possibly employees of a nearby California slaughterhouse or meat-packing plant. The assailants were probably young, and most likely of Swedish, Danish, Norweigan or German descent. They are also presumed to be highly educated, as most California meat-packing plant workers have either liberal arts degrees or business school diplomas.
The most likely motivation for the stabbing was to avenge the female cell-phone-talker’s honor, and particularly to teach the victim a lesson — i.e., that either girlfriends or sisters of Danish/Norweigan/Swedish/German men can talk all they want during a film, and anyone who vocally complains will have to pay the price.
The attackers are reportedly still at large. Anyone with information on the attack, or who is familiar with anyone from the Swedish/Danish/Norweigan/German community in the greater Lancaster area, is asked to contact the Lancaster sheriff’s station at (661) 948-8466.
There are probably a few reasons why The Hurt Locker took the Best Picture Oscar over Avatar, but Notes on a Season columnist Pete Hammond believes it came down to one thing — i.e., “the actors branch, dummy.”
1,205 Academy members. Three times as many as any other peer group. Freaked by performance capture. Voted their pocketbooks. Said “hell no” to the Na’vi.
“With few exceptions, most of the actors I asked [about the Oscar race] thought that Avatar’s advanced performance capture technique was threatening their career future,” Hammond writes. “I remember sitting next to JoBeth Williams (Poltergeist) at a Lovely Bones lunch event in December, and she said she worried it had the potential to eventually put actors out of work.
“Heavily involved with the Screen Actors Guild Foundation, she said then that SAG was forming a committee to investigate the process.” What — like HUAC looking into industry-wide commie subversion?
“Avatar producer Jon Landau told Film Drunk shortly after the film was snubbed by the SAG acting nominations that ‘I blame ourselves for not educating people (actors). We made a commitment to our actors that what they would see up there on the screen is their performance, not somebody else’s interpretation of what their performance might be.’
“James Cameron said performers were confusing it with animation but that the ‘creator here is the actor, not the unseen hand of the animator.’
“That message clearly wasn’t heard by most of the actors I talked to last Sunday. Aside from sensing a heavy Hurt Locker vibe in the room, many, while acknowledging the technical prowess of the film, didn’t believe Avatar was their sort of film, at least when it comes to Academy Awards.”
The mood-style of this She & Him music video is similar to that much-loved Joseph Gordon Levitt musical number in (500) Days of Summer. Ironically kitschy, of course — a late 1950s sensibility but “in quotes.” It doesn’t embrace the schmaltzy flavorings of The Pajama Game, but it winks at this. So much of pop music these days has been feminized, lightened up — that classic Lou Reed guitar-bass-and-drums thing is out the window.
This is the first time I’ve really responded positively/favorably to Lady Gaga doing anything. I’ve been asleep on her until this moment. And I would have been totally down for this version rather than the one that Tim Burton chose to make. And so would the Hispanic Eloi, I’m betting, with whom I saw Alice last weekend.
Marshall Fine‘s primary complaints about Paul Greengrass‘s Green Zone (Universal, 3.12) are that (a) PG shaky-cam is starting to piss him off, and (b) Greengrass shouldn’t have taken the fictionalized chickenshit route but followed the lead of Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s best-selling book and followed the facts and named real names.
The result of Greengrass’s fictional approach is that Green Zone advances a bullshit notion that honest soldiers (like Matt Damon‘s Roy Miller) telling the truth helped the press raise public awareness and turn the tide of opinion against the war. The facts — including the press’ shameful performance and polls showing that a solid 50-plus percent of Americans still believe we actually did find WMD — would suggest otherwise.”
“Given a stronger sense of purpose, the film might have recounted exactly those failings and shown in stark relief how we were hoodwinked into war. Then again, there hasn’t been an Iraq war movie yet that found an audience by telling the truth about government mendacity. This one might because it’s essentially being sold as Bourne 4.”
Boxoffice.com’s Ray Greene has criticized Green Zone in a similar vein, but with the gloves totally off — he’s really torn it a new one. He calls it “an exercise in commercial cowardice masquerading as a thriller about political bravery…a kind of moral atrocity.”
Your Tron Legacy post is generating a lot of interest,” an industry friend remarks. “It’s safe to say that Disney is extremely bullish on this movie primarily because of its director, Joseph Kosinski, who is now on the short list for every tentpole project. He’s the next ‘real deal’ in that he’s got a Cameron-like technical knowledge, is responsible with budgets and operates on an even keel…overall a remarkably talented, well adjusted guy with actual story sense and actor readability as well. His website incudes some of his commercial work that put him on the map.”
Tron Legacy director Joseph Kosinski during last summer’s Comic-Con.
- Really Nice Ride
To my great surprise and delight, Christy Hall‘s Daddio, which I was remiss in not seeing during last year’s Telluride...
More » - Live-Blogging “Bad Boys: Ride or Die”
7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when...
More » - One of the Better Apes Franchise Flicks
It took me a full month to see Wes Ball and Josh Friedman‘s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes...
More »
- The Pull of Exceptional History
The Kamala surge is, I believe, mainly about two things — (a) people feeling lit up or joyful about being...
More » - If I Was Costner, I’d Probably Throw In The Towel
Unless Part Two of Kevin Costner‘s Horizon (Warner Bros., 8.16) somehow improves upon the sluggish initial installment and delivers something...
More » - Delicious, Demonic Otto Gross
For me, A Dangerous Method (2011) is David Cronenberg‘s tastiest and wickedest film — intense, sexually upfront and occasionally arousing...
More »