Last week L.A.Times sports writer Lance Pugmire happened to run into Mickey Rourke during a visit to the Wild Card Gym. Rourke talked to Pugmire about the boxing world and the people in it. As Debbie Goffa writes, “It is a telling interview, just under four minutes long, and shows where Rourke’s heart really is — boxing.”
IFC Films has made a wise decision in acquiring U.S. rights to Armando Iannucci ‘s hilarious In The Loop, which I wrote about on 1.13. Pic will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this evening. It costars Peter Capaldi, James Gandolfini, Tom Hollander, Gina McKee, Mimi Kennedy, David Rasche, Chris Addison, Anna Chlumsky and Steve Coogan. The deal was negotiated by Arianna Bocco and Betsy Rodgers for IFC Films with Cassian Elwes of William Morris Independent and Ben Roberts of Protagonist Pictures on behalf of BBC Films, Aramid Capital and UK Film Council.
Arriving in downtown Santa Barbara sometime around 3 pm.
State Street from Hollywood Elsewhere on Vimeo.
15 minutes south of Santa Barbara from Hollywood Elsewhere on Vimeo.
Salt Lake City airport, gate B15 — 1.22.09, 9:22 am. Driving up to the Santa Barbara Film Festival as soon as I land in Los Angeles, arriving sometime around 3 or 4 pm.
In this corner, the three most warmly received Oscar nominations are those for Richard Jenkins in The Visitor for Best Actor, Melissa Leo‘s for Best Actress for her Frozen River turn, and an excellent Best Supporting Actor nomination going to Michael Shannon — Michael Shannon, ladies and gentlemen! — for his truth-telling nutter in Revolutionary Road.
I really wasn’t figuring on Happy-Go-Lucky‘s Sally Hawkins not getting nominated for Best Actress. ’08 really was her year, and she was honored up and down by many other awards-giving groups.
And the Academy blew off bestowing a gold-watch Best Actor nomination for Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino. Just not enough love.
The inclusion of The Reader in the Best Picture quintet is a bit weird. What decided it, I wonder — the holocaust factor? Because it really doesn’t work all that well.
What happened to the alleged groundswell momentum for The Dark Knight being Best Picture nommed, and especially WALL*E jumping the animation Rio Grande fence and getting nommed for Best Picture as well?
Hooray for Viola Davis receiving her much-deserved Best Supporting Actress nomination for that one absolute-killer scene in Doubt.
In my book and in the eyes of independent contrarian thinkers in years and decades to come, Che should have nabbed a Best Picture nomination, and Steven Soderbergh easily deserves a Best Director nomination for his intensely passionate work on this film. And a Best Actor nomination for Benicio del Toro as well — let’s not forget that.
No Best Picture nomination for The Dark Knight or WALL*E, but 13 nominations for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button? Okay, fine, what’s done is done…but in this respect the Oscar nominations are feeling a bit tepid to me.
Whoa, wait a minute, whoa…Brad Pitt has been nominated for Best Actor for playing a passive sponge man with two and a half expressions? This is a performance abour makeup and CG. Button is very worthy film in some respects, but this is comic relief. This is ridiculous. Nobody in the movie-savvy world has even flirted with medium-level (much less high) praise for Pitt’s performance in this film.
The Best Picture nominations went to Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader and the all but certain winner, Slumdog Millionaire.
I’m just going to post the nominations plain and straight and then run commentary in a subsequent post. My shuttle taking me to Salt Lake City arrives at 8:10 am — less than an hour from now! — so let’s just do this.
Best Actor: Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon, Sean Penn, Milk; Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler; Richard Jenkins, The Visitor.
Best Actress: Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married, Angelina Jolie, Changeling, Melissa Leo, Frozen River, Meryl Streep, Doubt, Kate Winslet, The Reader (but also for Revolutionary Road).
Best Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin, Milk; Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder; Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt; Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight; Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road.
Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, Doubt; Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona; Viola Davis, Doubt; Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; and Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler.
Best Director: Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire; Stephen Daldry, The Reader; David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon; Gus Van Sant, Milk.
Best Foreign Language Film: The Baader-Meinhof Complex (Germany); The Class (France); Departures (Japan); Revanche” (Austria); Three Monkeys (Turkey); and Waltz with Bashir (Israel).
Here are the rest of the nominations. I have some commentary to post and a shuttle to catch in 20 minutes.
The New York Post reported a little while ago that Caroline Kennedy has folded her bid to seek appointment to the New York Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton.
To go by an e-mailed statement received a couple of hours ago, I think I understand the gist of Jeff “the Dude” Dowd‘s objection to the negative feelings about Dirt! The Movie expressed by John “knuckle sandwich” Anderson .
Dowd is basically saying that in the case of documentaries exploring the ruination of the planet and what can be done about this, film critics should get with the new spirit of the nation under Barack Obama and double-track their reviews.
In short, don’t just say if the film is well-made or not, but also give credit where due if the film is providing important and constructive information.
“Rather than precluding their opinions about anything they find negative in the film’s construction or execution,” Dowd says, “they [should] at least support any enlightening ideas and solutions.”
In other words, in the same way that the modern art trends in painting were “called off” during the government-sponsored WPA period of the 1930s, Dowd believes that film critics should, in the case of well-meaning docs looking to help turn things around for the planet, include a kind of WPA attitude in their analysis and criticism.
“My disagreement with John Anderson was not over his critical reaction to Dirt!, which he has every right to and which I find enlightening, but his statement that the film wouldn’t appeal to the public.
“I suggested he come back into the theater for the q & a and he would observe what we had seen at all four screenings — that audiences felt the film had all kinds of new information and practical solutions. It wasn’t homework, but hope made pragmatic on how we can change the planet in keeping with Obama’s Inauguration speech.
“I told Anderson one of scores of examples of this was when John Densmore of The Doors stood up at our first screening (after a sustained audience applause at the end) and said ‘I have my own film here–which I clearly care about–but here is my ballot which I marked 4 stars because Dirt! is the film that should win the Sundance Festival.’ That was emblematic of all the great feedback. I just asked Anderson to put that in the mix before making assumptions that audiences would respond negatively.”
“It should also be said that a vast majority of audience members liked the film not just because they ‘support the cause.’ We have heard dozens of comments about the quality of the filmmaking and storytelling as well. In the spirit of John Waters we even had smell-o-vision at one screening where you could smell the sweet earthy scent of dirt and mother earth.”
“Film criticism is fine but ill-informed assumptions are not what is best for the planet and not in the spirit of the dialogue that goes on at Sundance. He simply didn’t do a reporter’s homework and listen to audience members, before saying, ‘People will not respond to this film.” How can Anderson say those who responded so favorably are ‘just sheep‘, when most of the audience excitedly remained to discuss, and were clearly moved and inspired? I know that by the shank of the fest, critics are justifiably burnt-out, nonetheless he simply didn’t allow himself to see the reality here.
“We are at a historic time when information and dialogue are the life-blood of democracy and are essential to the future of the planet. In such a time informative and hopeful movies like Dirt! The Movie deserve discussion, not the simple dismissal John was unfortunately giving it.”
The Greatest director Shana Feste (l.), Sundance honcho John Cooper before this morning’s screening at the Park City Library — Wednesday, 1.21.09, 11:20 am
Humpday director Lynn Shelton and some of her team (including costar Joshua Leonard) during q & a at the Racquet Club — 1.21.09, 4:10 pm. Shelton announced she’d just concluded a distribution deal with Magnolia Pictures.
Because I did the right thing and focused on seeing two films I needed to see — The Greatest, which played at the Library at 11:30 this morning, and Humpday, which I saw and quite loved at a Racquet Club screening that began at 2:15 pm — I missed the noon dustup between John “knuckle sandwich” Anderson and Jeff “the Dude” Dowd.
The dining table in the Yarrow hotel’s restaurant where Variety critic John Anderson was allegedly sitting before standing up and face-punching Jeff “the Dude” Dowd earlier today.
As I’m seeing Shrink at 6:15 pm, I don’t have time to talk to investigate and re-report the episode chapter-and-verse. Here are reports from Variety‘s Anne Thompson, Spoutblog‘s Karina Longworth and MCN’s Kim Voynar.
It’s not permitted to hit someone, but we all know how we sometime get when we’re tired and stressed from over-work. I think it’s very decent of Dowd not to have pressed charges. And of course, it’s very good for Dirt! The Movie, which is what the fisticuffs were more or less about.
I suggested a year or so ago that it might not be a bad idea to have an organized Movie Critics Fight Club, in which anyone who disagrees with the view of a critic would put on a pair of trunks and try to defeat the critic in the ring. Gloves, no bare knuckles. Whoever lost would be wrong and whoever won would be right by the law of divine ordinance. I offered to fight somebody over In The Valley of Elah…well, not really. I said I’d fight a New York critic who hated it, but I wasn’t sincere because I wouldn’t want to bang my hands up and not be able to write. I’m just saying that the concept of fighting for your film-loving (or hating) make sense on a certain level.
Entertainment Weekly-generated poster mounted outside Park City’s Egyptian theatre, in acknowledgement of Pierce Brosnan’s performance in The Greatest.
Inside Park City’s Main Street Deli — 1.21.09, 9:50 am.
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