This okay but unexceptional Chicago Tribune piece about great movie endings reminds me that no matter what you may or may not think about There Will Be Blood as a whole, the ending — the final line, I mean — is almost certainly the year’s best.
The second best ending, of course, belongs to No Country for Old Men — the combination of that final line (“Then I woke up”), the cut to a silent and meditative Tess Harper across the kitchen table, and then back to Tommy Lee Jones…beat, beat, cut to black.
The year’s third-best ending — I’m not being facetious — was delivered by the Farrelly Brothers‘ The Heartbreak Kid. Ben Stiller‘s character, realizing he’s again succumbing to the old obsessive hungers and behaviors, saying “fuck me!” — and a fast cut-to-black. Perfect! Ranks with the finale of Some Like It Hot as one of the best movie-comedy endings ever. (Which obviously doesn’t imply that I’m praising the rest of the film with equal fervor.)

Not a misprint, misunderstanding, misnomer or mis-anything: Woody Allen‘s Barcelona-based film, due in ’08’s late summer or early fall, is really going to be called Vicky Christina Barcelona — one of the most atrocious titles ever conceived by a first-rank film maker, regardless of subject matter, theme, metaphor or what-have-you.

This on top of VCB being Allen’s third Johansson pic over the last four is, I suspect, giving even his most ardent admirers, particularly in the wake of the disastrous Scoop, an uncertain feeling.
The romantic triangle pic (Spanish painter Javier Bardem and two American expats played by Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall) may, for all I know, turn out to be one of Allen’s very best. I just know it’s facing an uphill sereception with that title.
Risky Biz Blog’s‘s Steven Zeitchik has re-confirmed the VCB title in a recent post about Allen’s next film, which will be set, for a change, back in Manhattan.

Eight miles high…back in the early afternoon.

“Whether it precedes a biographical film or a historical drama, ‘based on a true story’ has come to convey several, often contradictory, ideas simultaneously to wary filmgoers: The events about to transpire on screen really happened, to the very people you’re about to see, at the same time, and to the same end.
“Except, of course, when they didn’t happen and the people didn’t exist and we scrambled the time frame and changed the ending. (Hey, we said ‘based on.’) This is our story, we’re sticking to it, and we’ve left the fact-checking to picky historians, outraged family members, alert critics and Wikipedia.” — from Ann Hornaday‘s 12.28 L.A. Times piece called “New rules for ‘based on a true story.'”

The lip-synching is off here and there and they should have found someone who sounds more like Mel Gibson, but otherwise this 12.29 WGA strike video is pretty good. I laughed out loud three times. The Frank Morgan/Wizard of Oz finale is best, followed by the Star Trek: Wrath of Khan bit.

“From Wall Street’s perspective, we estimate the impact of accepting the [writers’] proposal is largely negligible,” Bear Stearns wrote in a report last week.
If the AMPTP gave the striking WGA everything its negotiators are asking for, the world-renowned banking, brokerage and investment firm estimates that “the $120 million figure would carry an average impact of less than 1% on annual earnings per share for the media companies.
“That does not factor in any concessions by the writers’ side (the WGA), where the principal issue is a desire for a piece of ad dollars from new-media distribution. The potentially small financial impact suggests that studios (Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers) are more concerned about setting a precedent in new-media revenue sharing.”
According to Wikipedia, Bear Stearns had total capital of approximately $66.7 billion and total assets of $350.4 billion as of November 2006. According to the April 2005 issue of Institutional Investor magazine, Bear Stearns is the seventh largest securities firm in terms of total capital.

Anytime I hear anyone say “Eye-rack,” it’s hard to avoid thinking that he/she is perhaps a bit of a rube…no offense. Xenophobic, midwestern or southern, doesn’t quite get it, a football fan, possibly Republican or in the military. I used to think the correct pronunciation was “Eehr-rahq” until I met a French director who’d been to the region and said that world-traveller types pronounce it “Uhhr-raq.” I don’t say it that way to this day (it sounds affected), but “Eye-rack” is impossible. It’s almost embarassing to bring it up, but so many people seem to pronounce it this way.

HE reader Pelle Vehreschild, writing from Germany, informs that the German trailer for Juan Antonio Bayona‘s The Orphanage uses quotes from four sources to sell it to the viewer, in this order: Der Spiegel, Time magazine, Hollywood Elsewhere and Variety. Here’s the kickoff page.

I guess some of us aren’t fully appreciating what a huge crossover hit Juno has become, so interested parties are pointing this out by comparing Juno‘s numbers with the four biggest indie hits of recent times — Little Miss Sunshine, Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Sideways — which also became Best Picture nominees.
Juno grossed $3.285 million on 998 screens last night (i.e., Friday the 28th), Sideway‘s best Friday gross was $1.69 million on 1694 screens, Crouching Tiger‘s best Friday gross was $2.3 million on 693 screens, Brokeback Mountain‘s best Friday gross was $2.019 million on 1196 screens and Little Miss Sunshine‘s best Friday gross was $2.028 million on 1430 screens.
The logic is that since Juno is connecting with paying customers in a bigger way than these other four, it deserves consideration as a Best Picture candidate and then some. Juno is a very spirited, agreeable, good-hearted film with exceptional performances up and down, especially from Ellen Page and Jennifer Garner. I respectfully don’t believe it’s good enough to be a top-fiver, but the current seems to be overwhelming views like mine. I’ll be fine if it winds up getting nominated.

Back in Boston with a gentle reminder: There Will Be Blood is having a midnight sneak in various blue cities across the map. I wonder how it’ll play in Redville. I actually have my suspicions. A friend predicted earlier today it won’t enjoy good word-of-mouth among the plebes and will taper off once all the ubers have all seen it.

More trains and automobiles today, so no more action until later this evening, if that. Meanwhile a question for anyone who’s given the matter any thought — what films due to open in the first quarter of ’08 are HE readers most anticipating other than Cloverfield? I can’t think of a single one other than Sundance premieres. Anyone?